Nicholson Baker Quotes

The more you create, the more ambitious you become with your projects. Short films were a direct result of over 200 web series sketches and vlogs. After you create enough 2-minute videos, you start to wonder what else there is. Deadlines and discipline and quantity with a focus on quality have always been what keeps me going.

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.

I am always trying to write.

Studying James Fauntleroy, I learned it's okay to write a bad song. Just write another one the next day and hope that it's better.

You always have to try new things, and that's the one thing that we've learned from all the greats - every album isn't gonna be every fan's favorite, but as long as you keep switching it up and making new fans, it's really about being persistent.

I refuse to write the same story twice. I keep experimenting. I keep learning how to work. I've been at it pretty much 50 years, and I'm now beginning to learn how to do the job well.

Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.

I try to write every day. I don't beat myself up about word counts, or how many hours are ticking by on the clock before I'm allowed to go and do something else. I just try to keep a hand in and work every single day, even if there are other demands or I'm on a book tour or have the flu or something, because then I keep my unconscious engaged with the book. Then I'm always a little bit writing, no matter what else I'm doing.

You have to take a lot of bad pictures. Dont' be afraid to take bad pictures... You have to take a lot of bad pictures in order to know when you've got a good one.

By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you're allowed to fail.

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.

Keep writing. Try to do a little bit every day, even if the result looks like crap. Getting from page four to page five is more important than spending three weeks getting page four perfect.

Discipline is what makes a writer. If writing was like lifting weights, then I'd look like Mr. Universe. Write every day. Give the Muse a chance to get to know you.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

Oftentimes the shows that don't work help you get it right.

The way you get better is putting words on the page and getting them behind you.

Musical accidents are a gold mine. The thing about accidental discoveries is they won't be made unless you put yourself in a position to make that discovery. To do that means hundreds of hours, days and weeks where you do things and don't discover anything.

I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I think that's the way I was thinking. But my actual experience is that the best way to find out what the structure is, is by writing the play out laterally. You just have got to be brave enough to start without knowing where you are going.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or a bad movie, it's just to see what you learn for the next one.

The process of being a writer is much more interior than being a scientist, because science is so reactionary.

You become a better writer by writing. You become a better travel writer by writing about travel.

We shouldn't be afraid to fail- if we are not failing we are not pushing. 80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work. If something is not good enough, stop doing it.