Bernard Cornwell Quotes

During the day, if I don't have any other commitments, I'm usually at my desk writing, revising, or researching anywhere from four to six hours.

My mind wanders terribly. I'm not wholly annoyed by my daydreaming as it has been immense use to me as regards imaginative thought, but it doesn't help when it comes to concentration. And writing needs concentration - lots of it.

Oh how I wish I could be as obsessive as Carrie from 'Homeland' when I'm writing a book! That would save me a lot of trouble during the revision process.

I don't think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I'm rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time.

I can't conceive of nursing babies and taking care of children and writing, too. I know there are writers that do that, but I'm too single-minded. I can't stand to be interrupted, whether I'm writing a story or dressing a child.

I came to Hollywood to write and found out I don't have the attention span.

If I'm working on a poem, it's at the forefront of my mind; I'm working on it when I'm cooking dinner or stretched out on the sofa. But if I don't really have it by the 10th draft, I know it just isn't going to jell.

My first draft is always way too long; my books start out with delusions of 'War and Peace' - and must be gently disabused. My editor is brilliant at taking me to the point where I do all the necessary cutting on my own. I like to say she's a midwife rather than a surgeon.

I'm working on a new novel, in its 3rd draft, but it's hard to write while doing 7th Heaven.

I try not to worry about rewriting books that worked well the first time. I'm too busy writing new books to worry about things that are already in print.

The beginning of a book is always the hardest part for me. I'm a Chapter 3 kind of writer, which means I naturally start at Chapter 3.

I would rather have one article a day of this sort; and these ten or twenty lines might readily represent a whole day's hard work in the way of concentrated, intense thinking and revision, polish of style, weighing of words.

It makes it harder to write if I watch a lot of television, because television is not like a written story.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that I liked telling stories, and I decided that I would try writing. Ten years later, I finally got a book published. It was hard. I had no skills. I knew nothing about the business of getting published. So I had to keep working at it.

If you try to multitask in the classic sense of doing two things at once, what you end up doing is quasi-tasking. It's like being with children. You have to give it your full attention for however much time you have, and then you have to give something else your full attention.

While in the middle of writing a book, I have a hard time reading other books for pleasure.

I type most of my books for the first chapter or two - I use a manual typewriter for the first 50 pages or so - and then I move to the computer. It helps me keep the work lean so I don't end up spending 10 pages describing a leaf.

I never listen to music when I write. It's too much of a distraction.

When you're writing, it's a very solitary job. It's you and your word processor and a cup of tea.

Sometimes I am glad I am not a philosopher - how would I ever complete a single chain of thought when someone is constantly asking me to do something? I don't think Plato would have been able to write his dialogues if he had a wife who kept bugging him to pass the pita bread.

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

I have seldom written a story, long or short, that I did not have to write and rewrite. There are single stories of mine that have taken me ten or twelve years to get written.

I know that if I have been working on one paragraph and I have written it three times, it goes in the bin. Unless it comes straight out, it is wrong, it is awkward, it does not fit.

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.

I write every paragraph four times - once to get my meaning down, once to put in anything I have left out, once to take out anything that seems unnecessary, and once to make the whole thing sound as if I had only just thought of it.