Donald McKay Quotes

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

Writing doesn't leave much time for hobbies, unless you consider that I began writing as a hobby and have made the hobby into a profession.

I may not have become a good writer, but I managed to make a living out of writing.

At this stage, my chief professional goal is simply to keep on writing and making a living at it.

I always loved writing, but never considered that I could do it professionally.

My aunt could never understand how writing could be a full-time job. She'd keep asking when I'd get a real job!

I don't teach writing classes anymore, and I'm really glad I don't, because I would feel very strange about telling people, 'Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.'

Let's be clear - for people like me, who are obsessed with story and for whom words are their medium, writing is the best job possible. I work hard, but I earn more than the national average wage while I play with my imagination, and for me, that's a dream.

On a more practical level, anyone out there who wants to be a writer should clearly recognize that this is a brutal business, where even incredibly talented people sometimes never make a living. If you want to chase such a dream, please have a Plan B in place.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

To be a working writer is the holy grail, where you don't have three other jobs on top of that.

I tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.

My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it.

The Term Paper Artist' represents two models of writing, one of the little boy bouncing his ball, generating stories for the sheer pleasure of it, and the besieged adult, writing to make a living, having to contend with a very competitive, very unreliable world in which public image counts.

I've been writing full-time since I was 23.

Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.

I love writing, and I am one of the people who can do it and make a living.

I've had a few jobs, but if you want to be a writer, you're better off getting a job that doesn't require that you do anything.

I've always liked to write, but I never thought I could make a career out of it.

No, I never thought that I would be a writer. I had always been told I could write well, but it never occurred to me that I might make my living that way.

I knew I wanted to write professionally and get paid.

Even if I couldn't get my early novels published, I could still write. I went into newspapers, where I got paid to write every day. If there's a better school for would-be novelists, I don't know what it is.

Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don't really know about its value to the student. I don't mean it's useless. But I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.

This sounds like a cliche, but I always wanted to write. After college, I did some writing and realized very quickly that it's hard to make a living as a writer. At that point, I was more interested in fiction writing.