Stacey Abrams Quotes

I think it's hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing.

You won't make a living writing until you learn to write when you don't want to.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating.

Life being so short, and the possible books to write so many, it's good to function by night as well as by day; but would anybody become a writer if they realised at the outset what the working hours were?

My personal opinion is that, if you're a professional writer, that you do have quotas. So every day I do try to write 800-1,200 words. I don't always achieve it, and the reality is that a lot of the words I write will end up on the cutting-room floor.

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.

Writing is a job: you must show up.

I can only write about two or three pages of fiction a day.

In the odd moment when I am not thinking about horses, I write books.

I used to write at night. I was teaching school, and I was married, and had to do all the things that one does when one is working and has a family. But I used to write at night.

Writers' bedtimes vary, but few have been spared the shock of a copy editor's early wake-up call.

The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.

If you want to be a professional writer then you need to write consistently. Inspiration strikes about once every blue moon which, for me, is once every two and a half to three months, which is when I'll get really and truly inspired about something.

I like writing books. I'd rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It's not so bad. I am really lucky.

At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.

If you are a writer, Saturday and Sunday don't mean anything.

No matter how long my day job hours were, I always made time to write. I wrote fiction, short stories, and poetry. I never shared it with anybody.

There's a huge distance between who I am as a regular person and what takes place in my fiction.

I won't read novels while writing novels.

Some writers sit down every day for two or three hours, at least, to write, whether they are in the mood or not. Others wait for inspiration.

I've found, as I've gotten older, it's really difficult to write on the road. There are so many distractions, so many people in and out of the bus. It's really difficult to do. So I just keep a notebook with me, and I jot down ideas. I schedule appointments to write.

Read as much as possible, especially the work of writers who most deeply affect you. Make those writers your family. Never wait for inspiration to strike before getting to work; be disciplined and form the habit of writing every day.

Part of being a writer is just getting it in your bones, getting the muscle memory down, just doing it.