Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

Write regularly, whether you feel like writing or not, and whether you think what you're writing is any good or not.

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.

I started writing every day. I never stopped.

I think that very often younger writers don't appreciate how much hard work is involved in writing. The part of writing that's magic is the thinnest rind on the world of creation. Most of a writer's life is just work. It happens to be a kind of work that the writer finds fulfilling in the same way that a watchmaker can happily spend countless hours fiddling over the tiny cogs and bits of wire. ... I think the people who end up being writers are people who don't get bored doing that kind of tight focus in small areas.

Learn to write when you would rather sleep. Learn to exercise this gift of language when no conscious portion of your wits can vibrate anything but worry. Learn to write so, my son, and you can call yourself a writer.

The desire to write well can never be fulfilled without hard work.

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

I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.

I do sit down every day and make myself write. I want 2,000 words every day or 3 single-space pages a day. I think if you are on a deadline, you have to be disciplined. If you turn things in late, you will find yourself without a contract.

The only way to be a novelist, to think that you can create something others will give themselves up to for a dozen hours or more, is to have psychotic self-belief.

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.

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.

If you only write when the muse strikes, you won't get anything done. You have to write consistently, when your schedule says you should. And that's hard.

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.

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!

To sit down at a computer every day and write a script is commendable. I don't have the patience for it, but I have some fantastic ideas.

I write a thousand words a day. Nothing will stop me, I mean nothing, until the book is finished. I'm disciplined in spite of myself.

The only way to find out if you can write is to set aside a certain period every day and try. Save enough money to give yourself six months to be a full-time writer. Work every day and the pages will pile up.

Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict.

What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.

Writing day and night for months… that’s hard.

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

The only difference between a writer and someone who wants to be a writer is discipline.

There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.