Theodore Sturgeon Quotes

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.

I was a freelancer all through my twenties. I did about one story a month and I wanted to write fiction, so the stories that I would do were precursors to 'Sex and the City.'

For many imaginative writers, working for the press is a fact of their life. But it's best not to like it too much.

It got to the point where most of my time went toward writing novels. I would still occasionally write short stories, but only when I was commissioned by an editor to write for a themed anthology or special issue.

I knew I wanted to write professionally and get paid.

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

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

I always wanted to be a writer, and I did want to be a novelist. In college I took a couple of classes that taught me I would never be a novelist. I discovered I had no imagination. My short stories were always thinly veiled memoir.

Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days.

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

I got a couple of stories published, but the kind of money you were making for publishing a short story, I could see I wasn't going to make a living at it.

It's fun being paid to read stuff and air your opinion about it - pretty much a dream job for a writer.

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

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 taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the 'Time Warp Trio' novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds.

The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

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

When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.

To be interested in short stories, you have to be interested in fiction as an art form.

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

I think the few writers who influenced me most in writing short stories are Alice Munro and Grace Paley. They're very different, and I can't do what they do, but reading them gives me hope that I'll learn something from them.

I had been writing for the 'Late Show' for about four years when I started writing short stories. I had a blast writing the stories because I was writing in a voice more my own, as opposed to a man's. HBO ended up buying four of them. I think that had a direct impact on my decision to write a book.

I always just wanted to be a writer, not necessarily a particular kind of writer.

If you're going to write for a living, you should find something fun to write.