Writing Routine Quotes

I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something.

Ah, typical writing day? Well, I tend to do e-mail and the business stuff of writing more in the morning while my brain wakes up and then write more in the afternoon, sometimes from about 11 until 5, or 12 until 5. If a story is driving me nuts, I'll work more in the evenings, but usually I try not to do that. That's family time.

I write nearly every day. Some days I write for ten or eleven hours. Other days I might only write for three hours. It really depends on how fast the ideas are coming.

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

I built a studio in L.A. for me and my brother to just write every single day. And it's been great, man.

I always write my novels with music (I don't listened to the music seriously.) Music seems to encourage me.

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

Generally I start writing when I have even the smallest idea of how a book is going to go, because the physical process of writing itself keeps the mind active and focused on the job at hand. Usually I write in about 5 drafts, but that simply means there are 5 definite times when I go in a linear fashion from the beginning to the end of the book.

I write a thousand words a day.

When I'm writing, I never write more than four hours a day.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

When I'm writing, I write all day. Other days, I sit around thinking. Or I run around from one meeting to another, out in the world. It varies, and I like that.

I've never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.

My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.

I don't go to an office, so I write at home. I like to write in the morning, if possible; that's when my mind is freshest. I might write for a couple of hours, and then I head out to have lunch and read the paper. Then I write for a little bit longer if I can, then probably go to the library or make some phone calls. Every day is a little bit different. I'm not highly routinized, so I spend a lot of time wandering around New York City with my laptop in my bag, wondering where I'm going to end up next. It's a fairly idyllic life for someone who likes writing.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don't allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

Usually, I work every day, seven days a week. When I go three days without writing, my body aches with anxiety; my mood is irritable. My night dreams grow wild with unconscious invention.

Exercise the writing muscle every day.

I spend about a year between novels.

I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.

His [Sam Fuller] self-discipline was amazing. No matter what happened, he'd always go out to his Royal Upright typewriter and just keep working on his stories, his "yarns" as he called them.

I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.'

In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the act of writing. I don't talk about the anguish I suffer in creating. I do not have a fear of the blank page, writer's block, all those things that we hear about writers.

As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.