Michael Morpurgo Quotes

I don't write all the time. But if I'm writing something, I'll just bang into it every day until it's finished. I write pretty quickly.

I kind of like to write fast. It keeps the pacing up. And it keeps me off the streets.

I can write a book in probably three months.

For about twenty years, if I managed to write ten or twelve poems in a year; I considered that a pretty successful year, but I wrote 'The Beforelife' within a year.

Of the 60 movies I wrote, more than half were written in two weeks or less.

Generally, my notes and outlines comprise more words than my novels. I suppose that's one reason I'm a comparatively slow writer, something that has always bothered me given the fact that other authors can turn out a book every six months while I usually take about two years.

The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.

And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.

As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough - I wrote faster than I would write a letter - two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.

Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it's going.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

I don't write quickly, and I don't want to.

I write four books a year. I'm very fortunate that I write quickly; around 3,500 words a day. Being strict about delineating my writing time and personal life, as well as keeping distractions at bay, is the only way I can accomplish this.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

I'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing.

Three hundred words in a day is not a lot. So much of it is thinking before writing. And then there's the cutting. But you do what you do and keep moving forward.

I try to write 1,000 words a day - about three pages. When I reach 1,000 words I feel good. Less than that: a failure. More than that: tired.

I've never been a fast writer.

Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.

I write 2,000 words a day when I write. It sometimes takes three hours, it sometimes takes five hours.

I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year.

I was swimming in my swimming pool when 'The Secret Lovers' popped entire into my head. I got out, dried off, went upstairs, and finished the book in about 50 days.

I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences.

I don't think anything I've written has been done in under six or eight drafts. Usually it takes me a few years to write a book. 'World's Fair' was an exception. It seemed to be a particularly fluent book as it came. I did it in seven months. I think what happened in that case is that God gave me a bonus book.

I like to take writing retreats within a day's drive of home. Less travel time means more time for writing, which is the name of the game here.