Alice McDermott Quotes

I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.

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 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.

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

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

I'm one of those writers that have always worked on multiple things.

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.

I can write a book in probably three months.

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

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 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.

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 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 often write two books simultaneously. Usually one of them starts out as a fun experiment designed to give me a daily break from the real book I'm writing. And then that becomes a real book too.

Writing - not being a writer with interesting habits - gets priority.

Don't force yourself to write. Some people can write a novel in a few months, whereas for others it can take over a year. I'm lucky to be one of the former - but, even so, if I'm not in the mood to write, I won't. I'll go off, do something else and come back to it when I'm ready.

I'm not a compulsive writer. I wish I could be compulsive about something. I have no regular writing routine.

Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.

I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year.

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

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.

I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer.

If you want to be a professional writer then you need to write consistently. Inspiration strikes about once every blue moon which, for me, is once every two and a half to three months, which is when I'll get really and truly inspired about something.