Mallory Ortberg Quotes

When the ideas are coming, I don't stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn't come along all the time.

Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.

I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten hours a week writing. The writing is going on all the time in my head; the trick is to capture it. Showers are great. Traffic jams are great.

I always worried that the creative well would dry up. I was sure that if I wrote a book a year, I would eventually run out of ideas. Actually, the opposite has been true for me. The more I write, the more ideas come to me and it gets easier.

I have a lot of sketches and ideas, but when you don't use them, they get stale.

Sometimes you don't really know what you're going to write about. I mean, there's times where you get into a writing room and it's a complete flop. And then there's times where you get to a writing room and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just on a roll.'

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

I write all the time and I try to think of ideas all the time.

I wake up sometimes with an idea and then I write it down. It's not necessarily easy, but when you focus on something it comes.

I write about two hours a day, and I write in fits and spurts - 45 minutes here, a half-hour there - and when I get stuck, which happens often, I take the dogs for a walk. But during the time when I'm not actually writing, I'm thinking.

I want to spend my time between the creation of ideas and the creation of things.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

I try to stay focused on my creativity.

When you have one idea per year, it's already a miracle!

I like all kinds of stories, and I usually work on several stories at once. When I run out of gas on one, I start work on the other.

I have a folder in my office with about 400 ideas in it. So it will take me another 40 years to get through those.

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.

I hate thinking about writer's block! I don't have writer's block much, knock on wood, but if I do, I think it's usually because I haven't done enough research and am therefore unable to create a fully realized world.

In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up.

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

For most people, creativity is a serious business. They forget the telling phrase 'the play of ideas' and think that they need to knuckle down and work more. Often, the reverse is true. They need to play.

A theory of creativity is actually just a metaphor. A pool of ideas, a well of memories, a voice.

When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.

The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day.

Recent studies have shown that our creativity is increased by 60% when we're walking. I encourage my workshop participants to write at their desks but think on their feet.