Jeff Lemire Quotes

I would say, number one, don't worry about getting published. Just write. Number two, just write. Three is make sure you read.

Novel writing is solitary work.

When I write a book, I'm making it the best book I can.

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.

Writing takes a lot of patience. It usually takes me a year to write a book. One time, it took me 14 years to write a book, not that I worked on it every day.

Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

Get your butt in a chair and write. If it comes out weak or bad or clunky or ordinary, then accept that this happens to everyone. Everyone. Get it down, get it done, and fix it in the rewrite. Just like everyone from Stephen King to J. K. Rowling to Chuck Palahniuk does.

I started seriously applying myself to writing fiction immediately after I finished graduate school. By 'seriously,' I mean that, instead of noodling along on a story, finishing it or not as the mood struck me, I set out to complete what I started, to polish it to the best of my ability, and to send out the finished story.

I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.

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

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.

I've always said the hardest aspect of the job of being a writer is writing.

I had novels to write, so I wrote them.

I don't really think in terms of making something that is going to be bought everywhere, because I don't read those things. My writing is a process in which I try my best to make good sentences and a sequence of events that is compelling and believable.

I do enjoy working with writers.

I should be concentrating on writing pages.

I think it takes about a million words to make a writer. I mean that you're going to throw away.

Process does matter; you need a process. What it is is up to no one but you. But if you can't sit down, write once upon a time, and go through however many hundred thousand words to get to happily ever after, you're never going to get anywhere.

Really, what you should tell a novelist is, 'Keep going until you finish the draft. Don't show it to anyone.'

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

Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game, that would unlock Tolstoy-mode, enabling me to crank out canon-worthy novellas before lunch.

Finally, I'm recognizing that rewrites aren't some cosmic punishment for childhood wrongs but the nature of the business.

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.