Farley Mowat Quotes

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

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 point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.

I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.

Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.

I write every day.

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

I'm always working on my next novel, even when I'm not.

I just write from dawn to dusk.

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.

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.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

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 write a thousand words a day.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences.

Don't romanticise your 'vocation.' You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle.' All that matters is what you leave on the page.

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.

The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but they are not writing. You know, they really badly want to write a book but they are not writing it. The only advice I can give them is to just write it, get to the end of it. And, you know, if it's not good enough, write another one.

My method is, I just sit down and write a book.

A writer has to write something that they're - sit down with or are interested in every day of their life.

I am a morning writer; I am writing at eight-thirty in longhand and I keep at it until twelve-thirty, when I go for a swim. Then I come back, have lunch, and read in the afternoon until I take my walk for the next day's writing.

People imagine that there are rituals, like lighting candles or sacrificing chickens. They really just want to know what the magic formula is for writing. I inevitably disappoint them by saying you just put your butt in the chair, and you write 500 words a day, and then you get up and repeat it the next morning.