Joseph Wambaugh Quotes

I don't answer the phone or do my email; I don't do anything until I've got the day's writing done. I have a word count for every day: 500 for fiction, 1,000 for non-fiction, and journalism is 1,500. That's a level I can sustain.

There isn't a single day I don't do some writing -- if you don't, you won't have a book. When you're self-employed it is very easy to burn away your time instead -- answering e-mails, surfing the Internet, or hanging out with friends. You really must have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Most of what I am writing is living in the back of my head or in my subconscious. I find if I write every day, my subconscious will do the job for me.

If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.

All through my career I've written 1,000 words a day - even if I've got a hangover. You've got to discipline yourself if you're professional. There's no other way.

A journalist also needs to be disciplined, and so do I. I am, essentially, lazy. Without discipline I'd be just a mass of gummy bears on the sofa instead of on book tour with my eighth novel.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

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.

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

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.

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

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.

Being a writer involves writing. You've got to commit to sitting down and writing instead of Xbox or Netflix.

The writing comes first for me. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not the Internet or signings or merchandise, or 'the career.' Everything begins and ends with the writing for me, and I build my entire life around sitting my butt down 365 days a year.

I'm not the most talented writer in the world. I know that. But I also know that I'm disciplined, that I work my butt off, and that I make myself write as much as I can. Writer's block is a luxury I can't afford. I'm a professional writer, which means that I put my butt in the chair each day, and I write. Simple as that.

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

I write about six to seven hours a day, five days a week, unless I'm traveling.

I'm a person who, when I set out to write, I write. It's just like when you set out to eat, you eat, or when you set out to sleep, you sleep. I don't do somersaults to write something. I just do it.

You have to fight against all the things that will keep you out of writing, because life doesn't go with writing. You will always have something more important to do: you will have to take your children to school, you will have to cook something, you have to meet friends. But you have to fight if you want to write.

I just write from dawn to dusk.

My advice to young writers would be to write every day, even if it is only a few words. Get yourself on the habit of writing and it will become a lifelong one. And find a place to write where you are physically comfortable. You can't concentrate if you aren't. Ernest Hemingway could only write standing up, and Truman Capote could only write lying down!

Write 1000 words a day. That's only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That's what writing's all about.

My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing.

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.