Sue Miller Quotes

A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum.

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.

Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.

I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.

Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There's a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I'm so easily led.

I have no discipline, which is a horrible flaw for any writer. Once I'm well started on a project, though, then I'm addicted to it all day long. When it's done, I collapse and have to really kick myself to start a new one.

We go to the office every day when we're writing - or supposed to be writing. It's not always productive, and there's a lot of procrastinating, just staring at the wall, like any other writing. But we just make ourselves go to the office every day for more or less the whole day.

I don't believe in writer's block. Most of writer's block is having too much time on your hands. My mantra is that you can always edit a bad page; you can't edit a blank page.

Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.

One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to - mostly the latter.

I've had to really teach myself that when you're not feeling it, you shouldn't write anything down because you're going to end up coming back and re-writing it later. Whereas, if you write when you're feeling something, when you're really in the streak, then that's when you're going to get your best stuff.

I couldn't understand why my productivity went down when I had deliberately made more time available to write. Then I realized it was because I wasn't flying as much.

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

I don't have problems starting writing. I have problems stopping. I'm one of the last dads to arrive at school to collect the kids, because I want to get this paragraph just right.

There are days when I'll write for 15 minutes and have to give up and move around, and I'll write another paragraph and give up again. On other days I get intensely - focused on the process, sit down at 8 A.M. and won't get up until 8 P.M.

Sometimes I decide I don't want to write because it isn't the thing for me to be doing right then, and I go do something else.

Fluency can be a sign that nothing is happening; fluency can actually be my signal to stop, while being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

When writers say that they need to 'set the mood' or 'get into the zone', those are all ways to procrastinate. Not prerequisites.

Sometimes you don't really know what you're going to write about. I mean, there's times where you get into a writing room and it's a complete flop. And then there's times where you get to a writing room and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just on a roll.'

I just said, 'I need to do something because staying up and watching YouTube and late night TV is not cool,' so I just decided to write a script.