Jane Yolen Quotes

Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.

It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.

Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict.

Even if I could not earn a penny from my writing, I would earn my livelihood at something else and continue to write at night.

I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must writer and write and write, even if everybody in the world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you.

There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.

The only difference between a writer and someone who wants to be a writer is discipline.

There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.

I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.

If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning.

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.

I want to be able to write, that's my first love and I don't want to deviate from it even though I probably could have made a lot more money.

When you make a choice as a writer about what it is you want to write, and what it is you're going to spend six months thinking about, you have to fall in love.

If you can still write in spite of the fact that you're not getting paid, that nobody cares about what you're writing, that nobody wants to publish it, that everybody is telling you to do something else, and you still want to and you still enjoy it and you can't stop doing it...then you're a writer.

If I don't have time for the writing, it's because I'm not making that time. It's really just a question of whether you want to or not, whether you feel you deserve to write or not.

When you make a decision to write according to a set schedule and really stick to it, you find yourself writing very fast. At least I do.

I think it's hard to make a living as a writer, but I think it's hard to work at McDonald's too.... I think the commitment is to get up everyday and say, "I'm a writer, therefore what I'm supposed to do today is write." And to do that, and to do that and to do that.

I love writing. I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing.

Here's the bottom line; writers write. Sometimes words flow easily. Sometimes it's like sloughing through mud. Either way a professional writer keeps writing.

Some of my affectionate envious friends say, "You write too much." Maybe, I answer. But as long as the best of your little is worse than the worst of my much, I will keep on doing so.

I wasn't afraid of being poor; I rather took it for granted. I was good at getting by with very little. I couldn't imagine sacrificing my writing to anything else.

I always ask young writers, 'Are you certain you want to be a writer? If you're absolutely sure, then do it.' If you really want to write, writing has to take precedence over everything else, except for taking care of your loved ones. It has to be more important than any possession, more important than fame. We hear about just a few writers who get famous, but most of them don't. It's got to mean more than that.

Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.