Colm Toibin Quotes

I mean, if you lined up 100 writers, you'd get 100 different ways in which they write. There's no right way or wrong way to do it; it's whatever your process is.

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

And that's what I've learned too: writing is key.

I like to believe that I don't think of myself as a writer. I am an amateur. Back when I was teaching, I wrote when I could. Weekends were good typewriter time. Now, it's whenever I feel there's something to be put on paper. I don't care what time it is, though I always write in the notebooks at night.

All writers have their own pet commandments.

The most important advice I can offer is that writing is a craft that you can learn by practicing. If you keep writing, you will improve.

Most important of all, there is no right or wrong way to write - there's only what works for you. I was taught to write every day, but I know a writer (a bestseller at that!) who only writes on weekends.

The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.

I don't write anything if I'm not agreeable and liking it. I'm not one of these slavers who wads up paper. It comes or it doesn't.

What works for one writer may not work for another. There are as many methods as there are writers. Were you to live to a grand old age, you would still never have enough time to try them all.

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.

Try to write at least 500 words a day. You may ditch 499 of them tomorrow, but you will still be moving forward.

I prefer writing originals.

One of the big breakthroughs, I think for me, was reading Robert A. Heinlein's four rules of writing, one of which was, 'You must finish what you write.' I never had any problem with the first one, 'You must write' - I was writing since I was a kid. But I never finished what writing.

I think one of the keys to better writing is releasing all of your ideas and to not be afraid. Dream big. This could be the greatest novel in the world you know.

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.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

What I write, I write. I'll always do it in some form.

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.

I think what I've recognized over the years is that I'm very, very bingey, extremely bingey when it comes to writing.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

As a writer, you have to first of all write what you want to. Listen to advice, by all means, but don't get bogged down in it.

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.

I don't write on demand - I wait for inspiration to come.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.