Quotes About Writing

For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. Not hotel rooms but hotel lobbies. I'm really happy when I'm waiting for a plane and the message comes that it's three hours late. Great, I'll get to write!

Acting is so much about waiting... waiting for an audition, waiting for the right part to come along. It's nice to write your own thing, write about what you're feeling and then go out and perform them. It's a nice thing to have and not get bored.

Having deadlines helps because people are constantly breathing down my neck, and tapping their toes waiting for pages. So I just have to work nine to five. If I didn't have deadlines then I might be more of a golden hour kind of guy, writing from eight to noon and calling it a day, but that's just not the way I work right now.

I don't like waiting around for work, and sometimes as an actor you're forced into that position, so that's sort of how I got into writing, producing and directing.

There is a plethora of topics to explore. I sometimes think I may never live long enough to explore all of the unique story lines I have either in my head or waiting in my computer file.

For me, most writing consists of siphoning out useless pre-story matter, cutting and cutting and cutting, what seems to be endless rewriting, and what is entailed in all that is patience, and waiting, and false starts, and dead ends, and really, in a way, nerve.

The Fiction Writer's Co-op has 51 members, from celebrated NYT bestsellers to promising newcomers, and a waiting list.

I worked as a carpenter for a few years. I began writing. I wrote a book about my time in Africa - that came out in 1988 - called 'The Village of Waiting.'

My husband really treats my writing like it's a job - and he reminds me of that when I have those low moments where I think I should just quit and become a waitress.

I was a waitress for nine years, which I don't regret at all. It taught me about discipline. I was always writing; it took a long time to make a career of it.

I'm always sad when Dad doesn't like my columns. He waits for them every week and usually likes them, in which case he doesn't say a word - it's only if he's critical that he bothers to call.

It is normal for me to wake and find myself writing in the dark... or to be out of my tomb, caught in an unearthly world, alive with the images that haunt me.

My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head.

Sadly, the only constant in my writing environment stems from some inexplicable need to listen to the news. CNN loops over and over in the background from the time I wake until the time I finally, blessedly, fall asleep.

I wake at 5 or 5:30 most mornings, make myself a latte and grab a cookie, write until 10 or 11, go have my favorite meal, 'second breakfast,' or grab coffee with friends, or play basketball. Then, around noon, I begin apologizing via email for the manuscripts I can't get to.

Writing is a spiritual practice in that people that have no spiritual path can undertake it and, as they write, they begin to wake up to a larger connection. After a while, people tend to find that there is some muse that they are connecting to.

Generally, when I wake up in the morning I set out a series of problems for myself and I write them down, and when I'm sleeping, my mind solves the problems. When I wake up in the morning, I have more clarity on the issue.

I know this is going to sound corny, but I love my life. I love my baby, so I love getting to wake up with him. And I have the most amazing job, with writing that any actor would love and costars who I can't wait to see on Monday mornings. And I love coming home to my husband.

I wake up early in the morning and walk for an hour. If I have something to write, I prefer to write in the morning until midday, and in the afternoon, I eat.

When you wake up, instead of checking emails on your phone, or counting your retweets, pick up a pen and scratch a few sentences into a notebook.

I have a friend who calls me the queen of the nightmares because I've always had really bad nightmares. I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, so I'll wake up in the night from a bad dream, and my heart's pounding, and I'm really scared, but I write it down, and sometimes I get ideas for books that way.

When I write, I make decent money doing it, but I don't wake up dreaming about writing.

Writing is never, ever easy but I wake up every morning grateful for the gift of being able to do this.

When I wake up in the morning, I need the writing to go to. I begin there. And that's not an accident, I mean, that habit of getting up in the morning and going to my writing first thing.