Juan Gabriel Quotes

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

I write every day. Most weekdays, I write about ten hours a day. That doesn't mean eight hours of surfing the Net or watching videos on YouTube. I park my butt in a chair and write... I learned that writer's block is a myth created by people who don't have, or understand, a writing process.

I'm not a disciplined writer.

But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.

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

I just write from dawn to dusk.

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.

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.

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.

There are writers, and I know some of them, who are very disciplined. Who write, like, four pages a day, every day. And it doesn't matter if their dog got run over by a car that day, or they won the Irish sweepstakes. I'm not one of those writers.

I write every day. I don't have a writing schedule. I write when I feel like it. Fortunately, I feel like it all the time. I am writing for hours. I do like to write in the morning. I start after breakfast, like 9 o'clock, and I'll write till lunch, about 1. And after lunch, I just have fun.

I don't believe in writer's block or waiting for inspiration. If you're a writer, you sit down and write.

Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed.

I write all the time, whether I feel like it or not. I never get inspired unless I'm already writing.

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.

A writer needs to write, period. He or she can't wait for the muse, shouldn't need peace and quiet, and isn't entitled to perfect conditions or the perfect spot.

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.

Some writers sit down every day for two or three hours, at least, to write, whether they are in the mood or not. Others wait for inspiration.

I'm a workmanlike writer. I show up every day and treat it like a job. The old rule that writing is like any other job, the first rule is that you must show up. I'm at the keyboard from 9 to 4 every day.

Not intending to be funny: I sit at the keyboard, put my fingers on the keys and go. To me, it's the real secret of writing. Put yourself in front of the screen or the blank sheet of paper and get to work.

People always ask, 'How do you write so many books?' And I say, I work a lot. I work six or seven days a week.

I make time to write.

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

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

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.