Quotes About Writing

I started writing, or rather, thinking, stories as a child, and at that time the reason was very clear.

Discover the time of day when you write best, and write then. For me it's about 7 am to noon. For other people it's overnight. Try not to do anything other than write between those times.

I was very conscious of race as I was writing. I was lucky to have spent real time in Portuguese Africa, but I am white and my main characters are white, outsiders at sea in the "Dark Continent."

But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

Writing is a necessity and often a pleasure, but at the same time, it can be a great burden and a terrible struggle.

I listen to music all the time. I write while listening to music. And I tell myself that the music nourishes the art forms that I do master and domesticate, and have authority over.

You can't be a storyteller and a speechwriter at the same time.

I can write for a long time on one novel and not get tired.

My first book took five years to write and I made $1,000 on it. The second took three years and I made $3,000. All this time I was a housewife being supported by a husband. I was very lucky.

First of all I can only focus on one creative project at a time. I wish I could focus on two, because I really only write.

We waste a lot of time and a lot of talent trying to write for the common reader, whom we will never meet. Instead we should be writing for our ideal reader.

As a writer, I find holidays often disturbing, not liberating, in their disruption of tempo, their open-ended time.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you're really tired. It's my relaxing time.

If you don't write when you don't have time for it, you won't write when you do have time for it.

I do not put in long hours at the keys - or very seldom. Instead, I snatch time. I write in the crannies of my life.

Writing is not a matter of time, but a matter or of space. If you don't keep space in your head for writing, you won't write even if you have the time.

When that little clock on my wall says "Olaotan! Olaotan!! Olaotan!!! It's half past time to write", I only have three things at my disposal: A pen, A piece of paper, and a crowded mind.

It's 1am, I have fiction to write!

Sometimes you can write about a character's day in under a minute and sometimes it takes a day just to write about a minute.

A 15-minute gap in your day is plenty of time to write and read, but not if you check your email first.

Writing is emotional...it is baring your soul to the world and waiting for someone to acknowledge and love it, or shun and hate it, or worse be indifferent about it.

Life is denied by lack of attention whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.

I never write anything without humor, just because I like humor, but at the same time, it is a way for anything fantastical to become relatable.

Writing is largely about time, while visual art is largely about space.