Writing Commitment Quotes

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.

I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.

Over time, I decided to take up only those stories I love.

Exercise the writing muscle every day.

If you are a writer, Saturday and Sunday don't mean anything.

It's physical. If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

Write 1000 words a day. That's only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That's what writing's all about.

If you're going to be a writer you should sit down and write in the morning, and keep it up all day, every day. Charles Bukowski, no matter how drunk he got the night before or no matter how hungover he was, the next morning he was at his typewriter. Every morning. Holidays, too. He'd have a bottle of whiskey with him to wake up with, and that's what he believed. That's the way you became a writer: by writing. When you weren't writing, you weren't a writer.

One of the easiest things in the world is not to write... If it were easy, everyone would do it.

I'm not the most talented writer in the world. I know that. But I also know that I'm disciplined, that I work my butt off, and that I make myself write as much as I can. Writer's block is a luxury I can't afford. I'm a professional writer, which means that I put my butt in the chair each day, and I write. Simple as that.

Writing a book is such a full-time job. If you're away for a few days, you have to start again.

I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.

Writing novels takes up about 100% of my available working time.

What I've become convinced makes a writer are the days you hate it, the days you'd rather stick those pencils in your eyes. Sometimes I almost punish myself - if I'm not going be able to write, I'm not going be able to do anything else. I just sit there and wait.

Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.

The word 'novel' carries, for me, a weight as ominous, all-consuming and unforgiving as any Job encountered.

I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows.

Gather knowledge about the craft of writing. Immerse yourself in the art of it. Then write. Write yourself silly. Write yourself mad. Write yourself blind. Trust the excitement that builds within you when the idea is good and the writing is superb. You can do it, but that's the hell of it as well as the exultation of it. You have to do it.

Sit down at ten o'clock in the morning and write anything that comes into my head until twelve. One of the few things I've discovered about writing is to form a habit that becomes an addiction so that if you don't put something down on paper every day, you get really mean and awful with withdrawal symptoms, and your wife and your dog and your kids are going to kick your ass until you get back to it because they can't bear you in that state of mind.

I will not write a lame follow-up. It could take me 20 years. But I will never turn in a book that I'm not happy with.

When I made the decision to really get serious about my writing, I set myself a goal of 1,000 words a day for seven days. If I got to 7,000 words before Monday I could take a day off, but I had to get there. I had to do that every week.

For a writer, children make life needlessly hard. I've muddled through a lot of things, but I have not muddled through my writing life. I work absolutely flat out, giving it my all.