Quotes About Writing

I'm writing; I'm teaching myself writing.

I think there is a rage against women. I've come to see that now although at the time I did not notice it. I was preoccupied with my teaching and my writing.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.

Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.

Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing.

I try to write everyday. I do that much better over here than when I'm teaching. I always rewrite, usually fairly close-on which is to say first draft, then put it aside for 24 hours then more drafts.

But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.

It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words.

When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.

I think I've become more like my mom just because of what we're both interested in, children and teaching and writing.

I love and always have loved policy issues and trying to have an impact on the issues that are out there. I cherish my years in government. I have loved my participation at CNN, at Current; writing; teaching. Where I will go next, I will have to sort out.

When you're teaching creative nonfiction, it helps to have written about your life in a very open way, because you can say, 'Look, how much are you willing to risk emotionally to write? How careful can you be with the other people you're writing about?'

I loved teaching. It was my world. I only left because I was overwhelmed with three careers - teaching, writing, and my family.

I've been teaching classes on memoirs since 1986, and I've been reading them all my life, and I think that I would like to write a critical book that might have some of those how-to elements in it.

'What It Is' was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.

I would probably have been very content as a scholar to have carried on organising exhibitions and writing books and teaching.

I wrote my first five horror novels while I was teaching.

When I was seven and told my mom, 'I'm gonna be a writer,' she said, 'Oh, that's a terrible idea. You'll live in misery and die teaching other people's children badly.' My parents wanted the safer path for me, and I think they failed miserably achieving that.

The core of my career is my teaching and my writing.

I have written more than 100 novels and novellas since 1983 - I was first published in 1985. There was an overlap of three years with my teaching career, but finally I felt good enough about my writing career to quit teaching and write full time.

I believe in teaching as a real job. I don't think it's a substitute for anything else. It's been shown to me that teachers can help, and the writing today is just as good as it was when I started out. Technology hasn't changed that.

I don't take off time from teaching to write. I take time off from writing to teach.

In the middle of my fourth year teaching is when I got my book contract - in 2010. I knew the book would come out in May 2011.

I think that's a part of what motivates me in my teaching and writing. Once the Gospel feels mainstream and becomes a nicely organized, orchestrated belief system, frankly, I don't think there is even an attraction to the human spirit.