Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

I write 2,000 words a day when I write. It sometimes takes three hours, it sometimes takes five hours.

I kind of like to write fast. It keeps the pacing up. And it keeps me off the streets.

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.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

Every spare second I would write, somehow. On my lunch hour, too.

I'm pretty disciplined to keep the momentum of a story going by writing everyday, even if it's only a couple paragraphs or a page or two.

I write a thousand words a day.

When I'm writing, which is 8-9 months out of the year, I'm in a concerted writing pace, where I work 5 days a week for at least a few hours a day, maybe a little bit more. But I won't work for more than 2 hours at a time. I'll work for a couple hours and take a break.

I used to be able to write five pages a day, every day, no problem. Now a good day is five or four pages, and that's from 9:30 A.M. until 6 P.M.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

I am a big outliner. For my adult book, 'The Visibles,' I did not outline, and it took me two years to write because I just didn't outline, and I had no path.

Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.

I start writing at 7.30 A.M. and write till noon. I've never written a single word after 5.00 P.M.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences.

The hardest part is making the time to write. Not finding the time to write, mind you. Making.

I'm a person who, when I set out to write, I write. It's just like when you set out to eat, you eat, or when you set out to sleep, you sleep. I don't do somersaults to write something. I just do it.

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.

I am a morning writer; I am writing at eight-thirty in longhand and I keep at it until twelve-thirty, when I go for a swim. Then I come back, have lunch, and read in the afternoon until I take my walk for the next day's writing.

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

Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it's going.

I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.

Discipline is what makes a writer. If writing was like lifting weights, then I'd look like Mr. Universe. Write every day. Give the Muse a chance to get to know you.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

You know, I haven't written as much as most other writers. Certainly maybe those who keep a more regular schedule accomplish more.