P. N. Elrod Quotes

A journalist also needs to be disciplined, and so do I. I am, essentially, lazy. Without discipline I'd be just a mass of gummy bears on the sofa instead of on book tour with my eighth novel.

I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There's a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I'm so easily led.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to - mostly the latter.

I write all the time, whether I feel like it or not. I never get inspired unless I'm already writing.

We go to the office every day when we're writing - or supposed to be writing. It's not always productive, and there's a lot of procrastinating, just staring at the wall, like any other writing. But we just make ourselves go to the office every day for more or less the whole day.

Getting to my typewriter is something I push myself to, but once I am working, I work hard.

Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.

To say, "Well, I write when I really get into it" is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snowblindness if you have to, but write something.

Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

I write about two hours a day, and I write in fits and spurts - 45 minutes here, a half-hour there - and when I get stuck, which happens often, I take the dogs for a walk. But during the time when I'm not actually writing, I'm thinking.

I write every day. Most weekdays, I write about ten hours a day. That doesn't mean eight hours of surfing the Net or watching videos on YouTube. I park my butt in a chair and write... I learned that writer's block is a myth created by people who don't have, or understand, a writing process.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

On a good day I write, all day.

Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.

The most difficult thing about painting is the self-discipline. When I finish a job, I give myself a few days, but then I have to discipline myself quite fiercely if I want to do some painting that's worthwhile. Otherwise, you're just doodling. It's much easier when you're just told what you have to do.

I'm not always as disciplined as I should be. I don't sit down and write every day, but I should.

Don't fall into the trap of having to have everything perfect to write or wait until the mood strikes you. If you want it as a job, treat it like a job, and just as you don't go to work only when you feel like it, you have to condition yourself to sit and write even when the ideas don't flow.

I like the busy-ness of office life. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that I love the solitary nature of writing. What happens is that you write when you're ready.

My writing life is always a bit disorganized. It's hard for me to get going, but sometimes, once I begin, I go like the wind.

One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need.