Sandra Cisneros Quotes

I think it's hard to make a living as a writer, but I think it's hard to work at McDonald's too.... I think the commitment is to get up everyday and say, "I'm a writer, therefore what I'm supposed to do today is write." And to do that, and to do that and to do that.

Write 1000 words a day. That's only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That's what writing's all about.

The only difference between a writer and someone who wants to be a writer is discipline.

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

[Writing is like fishing]. You don't bow because you made the fish. That's the difference. If you know that, then you bow for your labor.You crafted, you worked, you put in those hours so that you could catch that fish. But you didn't make that fish. You just caught the fish. That will help you stay humble and bow for the right reason and be very lucid about the work you do.

Start early and work hard. A writer's apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he's almost ready to begin. That takes a while.

Writing needs to be practiced; there is a limit to how much can be gleaned from a teacher or a manual. The true essence of writing is out there, in the world, and inside, within yourself. To write, you have to give.

Oh yeah - you have to write every day. Or every weekday. Because writing is a job. It's not eureka moments over and over. It's grueling work, panning for gold. You just keep at it and eventually you get a few grains. Or flakes. Or whatever gold looks like in rivers. Or maybe it's like fishing. Who cares? You just have to do it every day because you never know which day is going to be your productive day.

Writers aren't born, they're made - from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine.

The best and easiest lesson for me was to learn that writing is mostly hard work.

The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them.

I've been writing every day of my life for 65 years.

I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.

I tend to write a lot, which I think is the secret to being prolific.

In writing you work toward a result you won't see for years, and can't be sure you'll ever see. It takes stamina and self-mastery and faith. It demands those things of you, then gives them back with a little extra, a surprise to keep you coming. It toughens you and clears your head. I could feel it happening. I was saving my life with every word I wrote, and I knew it.

One word after another. That's the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it's the only way to do it. So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.

To say, "Well, I write when I really get into it" is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snowblindness if you have to, but write something.

Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.

I started writing every day. I never stopped.

The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.

When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop...even when you are convinced it's the worst garbage ever. This is the biggest caveat for beginning writers. Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it.

Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.

A lot of writers ... sit in a log cabin by the lake and put their feet up by the fire in the silence and write. If you can have that that's all very well, but the true writer will learn to write anywhere -- even in prison.