John Burnside Quotes

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 write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.

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

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.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

I really try to write every day. It's hard, but it's my favorite thing to do, so it's usually not too, too hard.

For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write. That's all there is to it.

Luckily I haven't fallen into the trap, which has claimed so many writers, of living from day to day thinking 'Ah, I'll write a book about that.'

I think what I've recognized over the years is that I'm very, very bingey, extremely bingey when it comes to writing.

The point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.

I write every day. I don't have a writing schedule. I write when I feel like it. Fortunately, I feel like it all the time. I am writing for hours. I do like to write in the morning. I start after breakfast, like 9 o'clock, and I'll write till lunch, about 1. And after lunch, I just have fun.

Writing - not being a writer with interesting habits - gets priority.

I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

Don't force yourself to write. Some people can write a novel in a few months, whereas for others it can take over a year. I'm lucky to be one of the former - but, even so, if I'm not in the mood to write, I won't. I'll go off, do something else and come back to it when I'm ready.

Write. Enjoy writing. Then, and only then, worry about the business end of it. Start loving your hobby, and then you can't go too wrong.

Writing is agony for me. I work at it eight hours every day, hoping to get six pages, but I am satisfied with three.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

I'm not a compulsive writer. I wish I could be compulsive about something. I have no regular writing routine.

At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.

Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

I write everywhere. I've written books while I was on planes, at Disney World, and in multiple countries of which I am not a native. It can be a struggle to make word count sometimes, but I will persevere!

Don't romanticise your 'vocation.' You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle.' All that matters is what you leave on the page.