Professional Writing Quotes

I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.

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.

As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.

I don't see myself as an artist, as a writer. The sort of writing that I do, which is popular fiction, it's work. I have contracts to fulfil, and I have deadlines to meet.

I was nearly fired from my second job, which was writing press releases for Boston's public television station.

After about twenty issues of Josie, they decided to pay me.

Til 1983, I wrote primarily for other psychologists and expected that they would be the principal audience for my book.

I knew I wanted to be a journalist ever since I was a teenager. While it is interesting and gratifying to be on the business side and to see how that all works, the main reason I kept a business role here was to protect the editorial integrity of Salon.

I wrote newspaper articles professionally for seven years, and I love newspapers.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

My very first professional writing credit was on a movie called The Dunwich Horror, and Roger Corman was the executive producer.

I realize I'm blessed to have the luxury of being a full-time writer. Not many people have that.

The second book, which was probably more from a professional standpoint - when I read Junot Díaz's Drown, I was like, Oh my god, you can write these stories and people will actually read them beyond your own little community. This guy's book is blowing up and it seems like [he's writing about] the neighborhood that I grew up in. That was a big deal. I read that in graduate school, so that's when I was really taking writing seriously, but I didn't know you could do it. I didn't know you can actually be an author. It was a weird epiphany.

For 35 years, I was a writer. I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren't funny. Some of them weren't appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that.

If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for your friends, get a blog. If you want to write for others...become an author.

When I'm writing for Esquire, my conscious thought is, I'm not writing for American Scholar.

Having a wife who is a columnist, I occasionally have to wait for her so she can meet her deadline.

My aunt could never understand how writing could be a full-time job. She'd keep asking when I'd get a real job!

I wrote all the time, but the idea of doing it professionally seemed like pie in the sky. Who gets paid to write? I grew up in Pittsburgh, so it wasn't really a notion that a lot of people pursue.

I live for the text. It's my job.

Writing for Mills and Boon taught me a lot of discipline. You have to produce books in a short time scale and four a year, and it teaches you a lot.

I'm never going to write a book like Anthony Sher did, you know, 'The Broadcaster Prepares.' I'm only talking to myself. I'd have liked to be a writer, or a journalist, but if things don't come easy to me I don't do them. I think if you're always thinking how difficult something is, you shouldn't be doing it.

[Writers are] the highest paid secretaries in the world.

I want to go to college. I'm going to take four years off. I don't want to miss that. I want to be a writer. I think that'd be awesome.

What's lucky about my career in general is that I stumbled into what every writer most wants. Not repeating myself and doing strange things has become my trademark.