Jenny Downham Quotes

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.

To say that I have an undisciplined mind would not be incorrect overall, but it's a little off the mark because I have great discipline when I write - but only for about ten minutes.

I do not go down and sit in front of the computer and make myself write; that's not my style.

So I thought I should write five pages a day. And that's what I did. Eventually I had a book.

You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not.

A writer needs to write, period. He or she can't wait for the muse, shouldn't need peace and quiet, and isn't entitled to perfect conditions or the perfect spot.

I don't really plan too much ahead when I write, because otherwise, I get kind of bored.

Every day I write. I am not waiting for a great idea from heaven.

I just write from dawn to dusk.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

I have to make myself write, sometimes. In the space between poems, you somehow forget how to do it, where to begin. It was good to be task - based for a while. I just came downstairs each day, picked the one I was going to do that day, and wrote.

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.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

I really try to write every day. It's hard, but it's my favorite thing to do, so it's usually not too, too hard.

The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.

For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write. That's all there is to it.

I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Search.' There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.

Capote wrote every day. He said that's the only way, you have to sit down every day and do it.

I write a thousand words a day.

I write every day. I don't have a writing schedule. I write when I feel like it. Fortunately, I feel like it all the time. I am writing for hours. I do like to write in the morning. I start after breakfast, like 9 o'clock, and I'll write till lunch, about 1. And after lunch, I just have fun.

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

Don't force yourself to write. Some people can write a novel in a few months, whereas for others it can take over a year. I'm lucky to be one of the former - but, even so, if I'm not in the mood to write, I won't. I'll go off, do something else and come back to it when I'm ready.

The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.