Penny Jordan Quotes

When you're a mass-market writer, people think that you can just decide 'this happens, this happens, this happens', whereas with literary writers it's coming from their soul and their core. But with me it does come from my soul and my core, and my soul and my core often go AWOL, and then I've nothing to write.

Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again.

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing.

People think that if you've written a book and somebody's given you a pat on the back then, you know, it's all - you're all settled, you know? You're going to be fine. I know that if I'm not confused, and really afraid, my work isn't going to be any good.

I tell you it's no joke to paint a portrait. I wonder that I am not more timid when I begin. I feel almost certain that I can do it. It seems very simple. I don't think of the time that is sure to come when I almost despair, when the whole thing seems hopeless.

I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection.

Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty.

I can't sit and twiddle my thumbs. I have to start writing even if it's miserable some days.

I'm not too fond of the hard work and the constant battle with self-doubt that goes on when I write, but I figure that's part of the territory.

I jog in the morning and then write for about two hours. There are times when I'm really excited and can't wait to get back to it. But there are days when I don't know what's coming next, and I really have to force it.

I think I need the demons in order to write, but the demons have gone. It bothers me a lot. I've tried and tried, but I just can't seem to find a melody.

The longer I carry on, the more difficult writing seems to get.

My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs - because, full disclosure, I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, 'Don't write that,' or, 'Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats.'

I'm always trying. Between every book, I think, 'Well now, it's time to get down to the serious stuff.'

A lot of times, I write and have to scrap it. You don't know what I'm talking about because the words are too much, and it's overwhelming.

David Mamet gives me great heart. When I ask myself, 'I don't know if I can do this again,' Mamet would say, 'Oh yes, you can.'

Maybe I can't write without painting myself into a corner first.

I often feel like not writing! Sometimes I overcome it by just sitting there until writing happens. Sometimes I don't write, because books often need periods of percolation.

There have been many days when I have had to work up to writing 'Irredeemable' because I just didn't feel like wallowing in that world, feeling those emotions... but that's the process.

I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

Writing is not hard. Just get paper and pencil, sit down, and write as it occurs to you. The writing is easy-it's the occurring that's hard.

I remember a point in [writing] the story where I said, "This isn't working, I should go and buy something at the supermarket or my wife will kill me." Then I said, "No, I'll go on."

I wish it was clear for me how it happened [stop writing songs], then maybe I could start writing again. But it's kind of an "it." It just submerged itself. Because the way I had always written was just that it came out. It just happened.