Antony Johnston Quotes

Writing is hard.

Artistry is important. Skill, hard work, rewriting, editing, and careful, careful craft: All of these are necessary. These are what separate the beginners from experienced artists.

What I've learned is that you get better at writing by writing, and that 'youthful energy' will only get you so far.

To write anything decent, it's hard. Anything you want to be good is hard.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

I think writing well takes a little bit of talent and an awful lot of work.

I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.

You become a great writer by writing.

I wish somebody had given me the news that ideas don't just fall on your head like fairy dust. You have to treat that like a job. You have to spend hours each day, where you're just like, 'This is the part of the day when I'm looking for an idea.'

Writing is hard. I mean, I sit there and work at it.

I have to always remember, writing is really hard.

I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

Trying to get the sentences right and the structure of the narration right is about as big a job as I can handle. But I also know that if you handle that job properly, everything else just clicks into place.

Writing is hard - writing is the hardest.

Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it.

There's no shortcut to learning a craft; you just have to put the years in.

Writing is hard work: it is like doing homework for the rest of your life. You are always chipping away at it.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

Writing, overall, has never been what I'd call fun. It's fulfilling. It doesn't come real easy for me.

For correct writing, the cultivation of patience and mental accuracy is essential. Throughout the young author's period of apprenticeship, he must keep reliable dictionaries and textbooks at his elbow; eschewing as far as possible that hasty extemporaneous manner of writing which is the privilege of more advanced students.

The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.