Quotes About Writing

You may well ask me why...I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There was no why about it. I had to: that was all.

By the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it.

When I am writing best, I really am lost in my world. I lose track of the outside world. I have a difficult time balancing between my real world and the artificial world.

I'm fond of all my characters so every time one doesn't make the cut I'm a little disappointed although I understand it.

I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time.

The way I write is that, every time I reintroduced a character, I'd have to face some kind of inner demon.

Writing time has to be created.

Frankly I'm fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else.

The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time. I don't do too many notes. I keep it mostly in my head. I usually start writing a new book around January, and it's due October 1.

I wouldn't write any kind of book without a contract and an advance. You can't invest that amount of time and effort without one.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

When my husband first read a draft, he said, "You spend too much time describing the characters' outfits." He was right. I removed much of the clothes talk, but quite a bit remained.

The opportunity to write for the 'L.A. Weekly' has been one of the better breaks that has come my way in a long time.

I actually didn't want to have control of the writing on my first album. To write, you have to have time to connect with yourself. I don't have that time right now, because I'm so busy.

I've been writing books without ego for a very long time. I feel like it will get what it deserves. Or won't get what it doesn't deserve.

I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.

The thing that was important to me about Hemingway at the time was that Hemingway taught me that you could be a writer and get away with it.

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.

You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, when a last page has been written and you haven't had time to know how much better it ought to be.

It's true that I have very little idea what I shall be writing next, but at the same time I have a powerful premonition of everything that lies ahead of me, even ten years ahead.

Be ruthless about protecting writing days....althoug h writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it.

When you're writing a story in bits and pieces, month in and month out, there really isn't time or space for reflection, no room to learn what those scripts had to teach you.