Walter Dean Myers Quotes

I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten hours a week writing. The writing is going on all the time in my head; the trick is to capture it. Showers are great. Traffic jams are great.

I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash.

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 kind of wrote when I wanted to. Once I get the idea in my head and get it outlined out, I usually just sit and write until it's done.

I don't write on demand - I wait for inspiration to come.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

I write all the time, even if it means recording in the hotel room. I write on the plane, anywhere, anytime I'm inspired or have ideas.

Every day I fantasise about situations and little themes I see in front of me that would make a good beginning of a story. But one has to be disciplined and just sit down and do it.

You know, as a writer, I'm more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

I really like to entertain myself in various ways when I'm writing.

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.

I write what I'd like to read and just hope that, along the way, others might like to read them, too.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

One thing I always did in my career was writing. I always was writing. I was trying to create things. For myself, for other people.

I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find the time to write it.

I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels.

I write every night.