Jerry Pournelle Quotes

I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.

Write a million words before thinking about getting published.

I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer.

If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.

Writing takes a lot of patience. It usually takes me a year to write a book. One time, it took me 14 years to write a book, not that I worked on it every day.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

Can you write 200 words a day? 100? 50? In six months, 50 words a day is 9,000 words. That's 2-3 short stories. If you did 200 words every day, in three months that's 36,000 words. That's half a short novel.

I am never really surprised at the way my books take shape. They are just not as perfect as I'd like them to be.

It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

For me, most writing consists of siphoning out useless pre-story matter, cutting and cutting and cutting, what seems to be endless rewriting, and what is entailed in all that is patience, and waiting, and false starts, and dead ends, and really, in a way, nerve.

If you want to be a writer, you write. Everybody wants to get published. You gotta play your long game.

I always counsel aspiring novelists that passion is the most important quality for a writer to possess - technique can be taught, but that relentless desire to write has to come from within.

I always wrote. I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the '80s developing my craft as a writer.

Really, what you should tell a novelist is, 'Keep going until you finish the draft. Don't show it to anyone.'

I would say, number one, don't worry about getting published. Just write. Number two, just write. Three is make sure you read.

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.

I've always been a writer.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed.

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.

There are as many routes to writing success as there are writers who got there. My advice, however, applies across the board: read widely, learn the craft by whatever means you can - workshops and writing programs are ideal, but even self-study can work - apply what you learn, and persevere.

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.

Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

Write every day, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is. Just keep going, and tell yourself that you will fix it later.

It's my job to write the best book I can each month and hand my scripts in. Everything else is beyond my control.