Writing Habit Quotes

The big new development in my life is, when I turned 80, I decided I no longer have to do four pages a day. For me, it's like retiring.

I've been writing since I'm five years old. I've been writing books since high school - junior high, high school. I write every single day. I never thought I'd be published.

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

There was the usual dreaminess, I suppose. Also a shyness that caused me - and others - to notice that I could express myself better by writing than by speaking. This is typical of many writers, I think. What is a drawback in childhood is an asset to a literary life. Not being fluent on one’s feet sends one to the page and a habit is born.

I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.

The most important thing for a writer to do is to write. It really doesn't matter what you write as long as you are able to write fluidly, very quickly, very effortlessly. It needs to become not second nature but really first nature to you. And read; you need to read and you need to read excellent books and then some bad books. Not as many bad books, but some bad books, so that you can see what both look like and why both are what they are.

I write a thousand words a day.

I write every night.

I get to office early at about 8 A.M., and I'm back home by 6 to write.

I'm always writing - its what I like to do. But when I'm not writing, I'm reading.

I've never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

No matter how long my day job hours were, I always made time to write. I wrote fiction, short stories, and poetry. I never shared it with anybody.

Nothing improves your writing, I think, as much as your keeping writing.

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.

When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.

His [Sam Fuller] self-discipline was amazing. No matter what happened, he'd always go out to his Royal Upright typewriter and just keep working on his stories, his "yarns" as he called them.

Exercise the writing muscle every day.

When I wake up in the morning, I need the writing to go to. I begin there. And that's not an accident, I mean, that habit of getting up in the morning and going to my writing first thing.

I write in a journal occasionally. But it is not a daily discipline for me.

I probably write a poem every 50 years.

I've always tended to write songs prolifically.

I get up every morning early, when the sky is red, and write for 10 hours.

Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.

Don't worry about never having time to write. Just write what you can in the time you do have and give yourself a big clap on the back, followed by a double latte and a blueberry muffin.