Disciplined Writing Quotes

I write two pages - that's all I write. It takes me about an hour. I've learned that's all I'm capable of and to push myself beyond that is foolhardy. It's a very delicate thing, and I will not abuse it. So I write two pages, then I get up from the computer.

Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.

January 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them have been well received by the readers. I write eight to ten hours a day until I have a first draft, then I can relax a little. I am very disciplined. I write in silence and solitude. I light a candle to call inspiration and the muses, and I surround myself with pictures of the people I love, dead and alive.

I start writing at 7.30 A.M. and write till noon. I've never written a single word after 5.00 P.M.

I show up in my writing room at approximately 10 A.M. every morning without fail. Sometimes my muse sees fit to join me there and sometimes she doesn't, but she always knows where I'll be. She doesn't need to go hunting in the taverns or on the beach or drag the boulevard looking for me.

I believe you have to write every day–make the time. It’s about having an organized mind instead of a chaotic and untidy one. There is a myth that writers are bohemian and do what they like in their own way. Real writers are the most organized people on the planet. You have to be. You’re doing the work and running your own business as well. It’s an incredibly organized state. [Also reading]…one of the things reading does do is discipline your mind. There are no writers who are not readers.

I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.

I do sit down every day and make myself write. I want 2,000 words every day or 3 single-space pages a day. I think if you are on a deadline, you have to be disciplined. If you turn things in late, you will find yourself without a contract.

Read like a wolf eats and write every day. Every. Single. Day.

Learn to write when you would rather sleep. Learn to exercise this gift of language when no conscious portion of your wits can vibrate anything but worry. Learn to write so, my son, and you can call yourself a writer.

Writing never came naturally and I still have to force my hand to do it.

I write in the most classical French because this form is necessary for my novels: to translate the murky, floating, unsettling atmosphere I wanted them to have, I had to discipline it into the clearest, most traditional language possible.

If you only write when the muse strikes, you won't get anything done. You have to write consistently, when your schedule says you should. And that's hard.

We need writers who will joyfully impose upon themselves the discipline of understanding and acting upon working-class-theory.

I'm pretty disciplined to keep the momentum of a story going by writing everyday, even if it's only a couple paragraphs or a page or two.

You get up and, first thing in the morning, you do your 500 words. Do it every day and you’ve got a book in eight or nine months.

I write every moment that is humanly possible. I write every day and every night. The only discipline I lack is the discipline is to quit.

I compelled myself all through to write an exercise in verse, in a different form, every day of the year. I turned out my page every day, of some sort - I mean I didn't give a damn about the meaning, I just wanted to master the form - all the way from free verse, Walt Whitman, to the most elaborate of villanelles and ballad forms. Very good training. I've always told everybody who has ever come to me that I thought that was the first thing to do.

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even.

I write pretty much anywhere - on planes, in hotel rooms, anywhere in my house.

There was a period in my life when I was very young that I wrote a sonnet a day just to learn concision in writing.

Write in a disciplined manner, but write in a way that is natural to the individual's thought processes.

I write every morning. From about a quarter to nine to a quarter to one. It might be nine to one, or 8:30 to 12:30.

My approach is to treat writing very much as a job.