Writing Blocks Quotes

I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you've got no control over it. I'm not one of those people who says, 'I've got to write a song every day.' I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I'm ready to write. It used to frustrate me, but it doesn't any more. It's just how it is.

It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.

You know, writing isn't easy. It's tedious. Ideas have a gestation period, and after a while, it becomes difficult.

I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten hours a week writing. The writing is going on all the time in my head; the trick is to capture it. Showers are great. Traffic jams are great.

I think a lot of it is that we used to tour so much that we never really had time to write songs.

I don't write a great song every day. I don't write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.

It came about as follows: over the years when I was involved in dianetics, I wrote the beginnings of many stories. I would get an idea, and then write the beginning, and then never touch it again.

Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

When I don't have any story in my mind, I am busy doing foundation work.

Don't force yourself to write. Some people can write a novel in a few months, whereas for others it can take over a year. I'm lucky to be one of the former - but, even so, if I'm not in the mood to write, I won't. I'll go off, do something else and come back to it when I'm ready.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

I think what I've recognized over the years is that I'm very, very bingey, extremely bingey when it comes to writing.

I try to keep a steady pace with my writing. I have found that super-productive days are usually followed by two and even three days when I can hardly write a word. I used to try for 1000 words a day; now I am high-fiving myself after 500.

I'm not a writer that writes every day. I just kind of have ideas. I jot them down when I have them, and when I have enough, I just start. And for me, I start more around noon, and I'm all about feeling. Once there's a theme, I can't not write.

I think about the structure, sure. I think about what's going to happen, and how it's going to happen, and the pace. But I think if I stop to think about it in an abstract sense, I feel very daunted. I just try to enter into the story and feel my way through it. It's a very murky, intuitive way of going about it.

I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.

I don't find it easy to think of good stuff to write about.

I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.

If you think about writing a book, or when I did, it seems daunting, but when I began writing, it just started flowing.

I'm quite adept at writing two or sometimes even three stories at once. So if I get stuck on one story, I switch the next and let my subconscious work on unraveling any plot problems from another story.

Everything about writing is hard for me except for that - the names pop into my head. That's one of the reasons why I always make sure I have a notebook with me.

I don't write on demand - I wait for inspiration to come.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.