December 12, 2011
"Don’t write when it moves you—that’s a loser. Try to make it habitual, even if you just start with 15 minutes a day, two pages a day. Make it such a part of your routine that not doing it feels strange. You have to be willing to write badly. You can’t say, “I’m going to write habitually, and it’s going to be good.” It’s unpleasant to write badly, but it’s much more important show up on a regular basis so that you’re there when the good stuff comes."

— Jennifer Egan

1:47am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZyD8yOEl
(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: Jennifer Egan writing 
August 21, 2011
"Most people won’t realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else."

— Katherine Anne Porter

12:44am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy8a6ui7
Filed under: Katherine Anne Porter writing 
June 14, 2011
"To this day, if I am dissatisfied with my work or frustrated by it, the question I ask myself is “If this came out in print now, would I be able to bear hearing it quoted to me?” If the answer is no—and it often is—I go back to my desk and start again."

— Tea Obreht

12:59am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy64DHB_
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: Tea Obreht New Yorker fiction writing 
May 17, 2011
as long as it's not just me.
Me: You do hate everything you write for the novel, right?
R: Yup. Except for a line here and there.
Me: Good.
3:56pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy5Cny9s
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: novels writing it'sasharedcrazy 
May 13, 2011
"In general, though, there’s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this."

— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (aka a lovely way to start summer reading)

4:34pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy55L4Uo
(Notes: 9)
  
Filed under: anne lamott writing yeshopeplease! 
April 10, 2011
"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

— Gustave Flaubert

2:39pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy4CFdpO
Filed under: Flaubert, writing routines are good 
March 3, 2011
"When I am working on a book or 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. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through."

— Ernest Hemingway

3:53pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy3O4aBK
Filed under: Hemingway writing 
February 25, 2011
"It seemed like the hardest thing I could do."

— Nick Flynn, when asked why he decided to become a writer.

1:15pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy3Gzkci
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: nick flynn writing another bullshit night in suck city 
February 13, 2011
"I had trouble with lonely rooms, but I never wanted to do anything else really. Every once in a while I would do some journalism, and that would keep me going. But I had trouble with the solitude. Everybody dos who is subject to their own moods; it’s hard to fight your way out of them. You’ve got to exercise, you’ve got to keep yourself in shape. All of this is difficult when you don’t have colleagues and contacts, but this is what I wanted to do, so I did it. Every time I think of a novel it seems so hard, I can’t imagine starting again. But I kept at it. I think I would have produced more if I wasn’t as lazy and perfectionistic. It’s a bad combination."

— Robert Stone

11:56am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy339dSZ
(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: robert stone fiction writing 
October 15, 2010
"Smart girls writing something catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what she’s writing."

— James Joyce

12:02am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy1EZbXG
Filed under: joyce writing ladies 
October 11, 2010
"As dramatists, our job is not to explain the world. Our job is to unexplain the world without analyzing it."

— Tim O’Brien

9:58pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy1DEd77
Filed under: yes!, tim o'brien writing 
October 11, 2010
"If it sounds like writing, rewrite it."

— Elmore Leonard

8:37am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy1CyRLr
Filed under: elmore leonard writing 
October 6, 2010
"The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming, although when you are writing you’re doing it and when you’re dreaming, it’s doing you."

— Robert Stone

11:27pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZW2QZy1B73YH
Filed under: robert stone writing