Sara Zarr Quotes

If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time.

I took my first creative writing class when I was 24, then went onto to get a graduate degree in poetry. I've sort of never looked back from there.

I always wanted to write. But honestly I'm glad I didn't do it back when I was twenty-five or so, when it's now clear to me that I was a very poor writer and could've ruined my career before it even started.

Every story I write is different. Some are hard. Some aren't. 'Chronicle' was tremendously easy. I have a hard time comparing my process on different things, but I will say this: The more you write, the better you get at it. That's one of the few things that's markedly true.

I was never born to write. I was taught to write. And I am still being taught to write.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

The books are like children in that having written one doesn't make writing the next one any easier, because it's a new set of problems and a new set of challenges with each one, and having dealt with one before means that you now know how to do it.

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.

I'm very happy with the way I write. I think I do it good. But I've never really considered myself a writer.

I have grown in my writing and I care about it now and I know how important it is to write stuff.

Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.

One of the things you get to do as a writer is that you get to learn new stuff all the time, and I hope that I'm a better writer when I'm 70 than I was when I was 30. That's one of the great things about a literary career.

I'm still very much in the apprentice stage of writing. I read somewhere that you need to write a million words before you know what you're doing - so I'm headed that way, but I'm nowhere near there.

I don't think many of us launched ourselves into the world of writing books fully formed.

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

I do have a little bit more confidence in - or at least familiarity with - my process. For example, when it feels like it's going badly or that I'm lost, I know I'll eventually find my way because I've been through it before. But writing itself is still hard.

It took me six novels before I felt confident of my voice as a writer.

If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better as a writer as I age.

I feel like I'm getting better at being a writer.

I've been writing for a long time.

I was a terrible writer at first.

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

Back when I taught middle school and wrote adult mysteries, my students often asked me why I wasn't writing for kids. I never had a good answer for them. It took me a long time to realize they were right.

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.