Junior Seau Quotes

A one-hundred-thousand-word novel might take a year or several years, and then you just come to 'The End' one day. But it takes hundreds of days to get to 'The End.' As a writer, you have to put in those hundreds of days.

The great thing about journalism is that there is so much exposure to all kinds of people who can turn up later as characters, whether you intend it or not.

I had to find stories no one else was writing, so I got away from the quarterback and the coach. I'm still looking for stories no one else has written.

A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.

I kept sending out stories and getting rejected.

To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world and how people spoke. You learn all the skills - you learn to listen, you learn to take notes - everything you use later as a novelist was valuable training in the newspaper world. But I always wanted to write novels.

I think writing a poem is like being a greyhound. Writing a novel is like being a mule. You go up one long row, then down another, and try not to look up too often to see how far you still have to go.

I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.

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.

My career as a magazine writer was largely prefaced on the idea of curiosity, to go on adventures and weasel my way into the lives of people that I admire.

Depending on what happens with my directing career, I don't think I'll stop writing, even if I crash and burn in movies and TV. I'll go back to plays. Even if I crash and burn there, I'll write a novel. That's the great thing about writing is that you don't have to wait for people to give you permission to do it.

Report, report, report. Dig, dig, dig. Think, think, think. Don't stop being a reporter because you've become a columnist.

Good titles are hard, people. Just ask the guy who came up with 'Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium.'

Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade.

Someday I would like to be the kind of writer who barrels through a draft, but I can't even seem to barrel through an interview like this, so I imagine I have a long way to go.

I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.

Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word.

I often meet frustrated young writers who say they've only got so far and just can't finish a book. Even if you don't happen to use what you've worked on that day, it has taught you something and you'll be amazed when you might come back to it and use it again.

When I was in college, I did sort of want to be a journalist. Being an actor, you kind of have the same interest. You go into a story, and you tell it from your point of view for people who aren't there. That's what an actor does with a character. But the real life is more more interesting.

I'd been in journalism about two weeks when I realized I would do just about anything to avoid writing, and over the years, I have.

My first attempt at writing a novel was horrible. I had to throw it away. But I stuck with the idea, which is what became 'The Invisible Circus.'

I worked with several writers at the University of Michigan: Nicholas Delbanco, Peter Ho Davies, Eileen Pollack, Laura Kasischke, and Thomas Lynch, who told me the same thing over and over again: Persist. Read, write, and improve: tell your stories.

If you do a certain amount of work every day, it will eventually become a novel.

I've never written anything that I haven't wanted to write again. I want to, and still am, writing 'A Few Good Men' again. I didn't know what I was doing then, and I'm still trying to get it right. I would write 'The Social Network' again if they would let me, I'd write 'Moneyball' again. I would write 'The West Wing' again.

Process does matter; you need a process. What it is is up to no one but you. But if you can't sit down, write once upon a time, and go through however many hundred thousand words to get to happily ever after, you're never going to get anywhere.