Writing Environment Quotes

I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.'

Sadly, the only constant in my writing environment stems from some inexplicable need to listen to the news. CNN loops over and over in the background from the time I wake until the time I finally, blessedly, fall asleep.

I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write.

A creative space is an important thing. There are so many studios that feel like doctor's offices in Nashville. I couldn't write there.

I have no system of writing. It's chaos. I could be upside down on my bedroom floor; I'll be scribbling on a pad that I'll then lose. I'll be on the toilet with my laptop on, sitting in the pub with my iPad.

I don't have specific music for when I'm writing. I'm usually listening to the same playlist or 'artist' before I arrive at the computer as when I'm walking somewhere after leaving the computer.

When I was in fourth grade, a novelist came to talk to my English class. She told us that being an author meant sitting at the kitchen table in pajamas, drinking tea with the dogs at your feet.

I try to treat writing as part of my daily routine: I write for at least two hours, five days per week. I tend to write at home, in a room I've set aside for the task. I don't work well in cafes or busy, loud spaces, although I wish I could. It would mean greater flexibility for me.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

When I go into a room to write, it's like I'm not trying to say, 'I need to write a song that sounds like Eric Church or Jason Aldean.' I just try to get the best song that's in the room that day. Whatever style or sound that may be, I'm not afraid to attack it at that angle.

I always write the same way. I always write with a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen on my bed. And then I go and type it up afterwards. I've always done that. Those things become habitual.

When I'm writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write.

I write in all sorts of places; it's a legacy of my time as a journalist, where I could turn out copy in a hotel corridor. But I have a little office that I rent in my local town, and that's my ideal place.

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.

I've never detected a correlation between where I am and what I write. I think there could be something subconscious, though. And I can't really speak for my subconscious.

If I'm writing a novel, I'll probably get up in the morning, do email, perhaps blog, deal with emergencies, and then be off novel-writing around 1.00pm and stop around 6.00pm. And I'll be writing in longhand, a safe distance from my computer. If I'm not writing a novel, there is no schedule, and scripts and introductions and whatnot can find themselves being written at any time and on anything.

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.

I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it's like writing in Manhattan, but there aren't as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. It's like writing in Paris, but there are fewer people speaking French.

I've written everywhere - in hotel rooms, cafes, airports, and planes all around the world. Now I have a home office, and the wi-fi is really bad down there, which is great. If I make a date with myself to write from, say, 6 A.M. to 10 A.M. on a Saturday, the fact that no emails come in helps me focus.

In my 30s, I wrote in the back house of a ramshackle Spanish Revival we rented across from the ocean in the Santa Monica Canyon. I wrote thousands of pages there, but in order to see another adult human being, I had to steal out through the brambly side of the house, along the driveway down to the street.

I don't listen to anything when I'm writing. I need total quiet, which is astounding, given that I spent years working for a newspaper and having to write features surrounded by ringing phones and people shouting.

I can only write new words at my desk, the one I've owned for 25 years. When we moved to our new house I designed my office around it. I've written everything I've ever written at this desk.

I write in my pajamas on my sofa surrounded by my cats. It's a bit isolating.

I usually do my writing in a very nice room, my studio, which is in the attic of our house in Wisconsin. But the nice thing about writing is that I can do it in many places. So sometimes I'll write in coffee shops.

I don't write listening to music, and in a way it seems silly that any writer should have to explain why not, as it's possibly no different from saying you don't eat gourmet dinners or play tennis while you're at the keyboard.