Elin Hilderbrand Quotes

I do sit down every day and make myself write. I want 2,000 words every day or 3 single-space pages a day. I think if you are on a deadline, you have to be disciplined. If you turn things in late, you will find yourself without a contract.

My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I'm always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore.

I think it takes a lot of desire because I think a lot of people who've never written books don't know quite how hard it is to stick with, to put in the amount of time and just make the commitment to just sit there every day and do it while everybody else is out having fun.

I'm a workmanlike writer. I show up every day and treat it like a job. The old rule that writing is like any other job, the first rule is that you must show up. I'm at the keyboard from 9 to 4 every day.

I'm one of those people who is actually inspired by a deadline. I might not sleep for many days on end, it may not be good for my health, but it definitely helps.

I had a notepad and I wrote down 30 things to make myself better just off the top of my head, and the next day I started to do that.

If I give myself a chore, for instance, when I was writing the songs for Shameless, I said to myself, Now, every day for 90 days you have to write a song; good, bad or indifferent. So that was really helpful.

The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.

When I start a book, I write a minimum of five pages every day, except weekends. If I'm going on a ski trip, I take my computer with me, get up at six, do my five pages, and then go skiing.

I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking.

I try and do 2,500 words a day, every day of the year.

I've never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

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

There are always deadlines I have to meet. I don't let myself get too close to the deadlines, so it's not like I'm just sweating bullets or anything if the clock is ticking. I never let myself get in that situation.

Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even.

The only strategy I know of is to write every day, which I don't always do, because sometimes I just can't, for various reasons that seem out of my control.

For the last few years I've tried to force myself to write at least one page every day, which doesn't sound like much but it's actually pretty hard to manage. Because I'm not allowed to do a make-up day. I can't do two pages the next day. The punishment for not completing my page is that I have to eat a vegetarian meal the next day.

If I'm not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can't write a word.

I don't look at emails, Internet or newspapers before 1 P.M. I wake at 7 A.M., eat fruit, drink tea or coffee, and read what I've achieved, or not achieved, the previous day. Then I take a shower and work on my next sentence until 1 P.M. After I've done emails and so on, I write again from 3 P.M. until 8 P.M.; then I socialise.

It's essential to have sacred time for writing. All successful authors have some daily commitment to keep on-track and moving forward.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

Good old-fashioned, puritanical work guilt is, for me, a better colleague than any Muse. If I reach my weekly word target by Friday afternoon, then the weekend is guilt-free.

For the first-time novelist you've got to get up at 5:30 in the morning and write until 7, make breakfast and go to work. Or, come home and work for an hour. Everybody has an hour in their day somewhere.

The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.