Jonathan Dee Quotes

I guess I feel it's funny to be looked to for advice on writing when I am still taking in so much from other people.

Mine is not a story to tell struggling writers.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

I thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day.

Having a support system is huge for writers. My parents were always encouraging and told me they were behind me, whether or not I made it in the business. My wife was always there for my successes and failures.

For the novels I wrote before selling anything, I didn't outline much. I had a vague idea of the story.

Write every day. Make writing a part of your life, but also don't be afraid of learning from others because I think you can. I still try to think of myself as a beginner because that way I can keep on learning.

There may be writing groups where people meet but it's occasional. You really do it all at your own computer or your own typewriter by yourself.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

With due apologies to Shakespeare, some people are born writers, some people achieve it after a lot of hard work, some people have a writing career thrust upon them. I am in that last group.

I always write about subjects which attract me because if I didn't, it would be awful, a failure.

If you write fiction, you're by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don't have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you're not lonely anymore.

It is actually a lot harder to sit down and write from A to Z. But for me at least, it's the only way I can do it, at this point, with any moderate success.

Writing is such a solitary thing, so it's nice, when I'm discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction.

I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing.

I wrote for so many years in a bubble, the way everyone does, and there were large swaths of time where you think you're doing this for nothing. An audience is crucial, a back and forth with the invisible readers.

Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.

When you tell them you're a writer, they say, 'What have you written?' And then you've got to tell them what you've done. I don't ask a plumber what he does. Then I have to explain what I've done, and I haven't really, you know. I've just told some stories.

You never meet other screenwriters because it's such a lonely profession.

Other writers know what you're going through, what you're talking about when you write.

It's my belief that I was a writer - a very hardworking writer - well before I was published. I did care what others thought, and it was embarrassing when people asked me what I had published, so I didn't talk much about writing; rather, I just kept writing.

When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

My father was a writer; I've known a lot of children of writers - daughters and sons of writers, and it can be a hard way to grow up.

Be aware of who in your life is actually interested in hearing you discuss your writing, and who's just asking to be polite. Listening to writers talk about their work is often excruciatingly dull.