Julia Cameron Quotes

I'm not a big believer in disciplined writers. What does discipline mean? The writer who forces himself to sit down and write for seven hours every day might be wasting those seven hours if he's not in the mood and doesn't feel the juice. I don't think discipline equals creativity.

I had to educate him that there was no such thing as writer's block, that writers write when they write, and when they don't, they don't.

An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.

I always have music playing in my studio when I design. It really gets me in the mood and allows me to focus.

I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge.

Don't fall into the trap of having to have everything perfect to write or wait until the mood strikes you. If you want it as a job, treat it like a job, and just as you don't go to work only when you feel like it, you have to condition yourself to sit and write even when the ideas don't flow.

I don't believe in writer's block or waiting for inspiration. If you're a writer, you sit down and write.

I don't believe in writer's block.

A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

On the whole, anything that gets you writing and keeps you writing is a good thing. Anything that stops you writing is a bad thing.

If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.

If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.

I am a person of high energy. That, and I sit down and I write when I get an idea - I put other things aside.

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions.

A professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.

Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.

(W)hat I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I'm feeling inspired. It's mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write.

I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.

To create well I have to be in a good mood, happy and cool.

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 get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.