Raymond Carver Quotes

I write every day. Most weekdays, I write about ten hours a day. That doesn't mean eight hours of surfing the Net or watching videos on YouTube. I park my butt in a chair and write... I learned that writer's block is a myth created by people who don't have, or understand, a writing process.

I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early.

My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.

I write every day.

I make sure to write every day, even if it's a little bit.

I'm the kind of writer that, once I get into writing mode in my brain, I'm non-stop.

Not intending to be funny: I sit at the keyboard, put my fingers on the keys and go. To me, it's the real secret of writing. Put yourself in front of the screen or the blank sheet of paper and get to work.

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.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

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.

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

Write every day even if it is just a paragraph.

I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.

But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.

I work every day until I do not have more to say. I learned from Graham Greene that a very good way is to stop work in the middle of a sentence. Then you know exactly how to continue the day after.

Being a writer involves writing. You've got to commit to sitting down and writing instead of Xbox or Netflix.

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

At readings, audience members sometimes ask if I keep writing past the two hours if I'm on a roll, but I don't. I figure that if I'm on a roll, it's partially because I know I'm about to stop.

I write all the time, whether I feel like it or not. I never get inspired unless I'm already writing.

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.

I just write from dawn to dusk.

The space where writing happens is a unique space that's hard to define, and when you're kicked out of it because you're travelling or distracted, it seems so elusive and hard to defend because you yourself doubt whether it existed.

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.

People always ask, 'How do you write so many books?' And I say, I work a lot. I work six or seven days a week.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.