A Quote by Alice Mattison

We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't necessarily just writing saleable novels or getting huge advances.

Alice Mattison

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Advances Diversify Find Getting Helping Helps Huge Just Necessarily Novels Other Ourselves People While Work Writing

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Alice Mattison
American - Novelist

If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.

Ursula K. Le Guin

I can work a lot faster when I'm writing a screenplay than when I'm writing a play because, if I'm having a problem with a scene or something, I can just be writing it in a way where there's no dialogue, or find a way to make sound do the work that I want to do or a close-up do the work that I need to do.

Zoe Kazan

I think that when you're writing plays, and I think it's also true with novels, it helps to have an ear for the music of language, for what we call poetry, for the sound effects and the way that the sound can produce sensual feeling at odds with or consonant with the content of the work. Your work is also gorgeous writing. It's very unfortunate when you open a novel that everybody's loving and it's just, you know, an excruciatingly bad sentence.

Tony Kushner

All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process.

Tom Stoppard

I've quit writing screenplay [adaptations]. It's too much work. I don't look at writing a novel as work, because I only have to please myself. I have a good time sitting here by myself, thinking up situations and characters, getting them to talk - it's so satisfying. But screenwriting's different. You might think you're writing for yourself, but there are too many other people to please.

Elmore Leonard

There's one massive problem with coming from writing novels into screenplays that I've discovered over the years, which is that you've got too much facility on the page. In novels, you can persuade people of things that work that don't really work.

Alex Garland

Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it's funny I assume a few other people will find it funny, and that seems to me to be a good day's work.

William Zinsser

Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.

Sinclair Lewis

I love the students - they are remarkable, inspiring people. I would miss teaching if I stopped doing it. The kind of work I do is pretty diverse: I can cast a play while doing a polish of a screenplay, while thinking about a new play and revising another. In other words, the kind of work that I do during my work day is not just writing, yet it is all part of the job of being a playwright.

Donald Margulies

I was writing blogs before work, then I was writing at work, and then I started writing books on the weekend because you just have that sort of energy in your 20s; it's wonderful.

Zoe Foster Blake

There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.

Chinua Achebe

I don't necessarily prefer playing villains. I know a lot of people say they are more fun, but if the scriptwriter has done their work well, you can find something realistic in a villain and find the mistakes in a hero - it's all down to the writing.

Mads Mikkelsen

When I'm writing a novel or doing other serious writing work, I do it on a schedule that dictates writing either 2,000 words a day or writing until noon. After I hit whichever mark comes first, then I can give my attention to everything else I have to do.

John Scalzi

My writing process is consecutive, like, 'mad scientist' crazy. It's not totally writing something that rhymes or even writing a rap necessarily. Sometimes it's just writing down stuff that I'm going through.

J.I.D

Exercise and writing are so therapeutic to me. I try to write every day and I make it a huge priority to find time to work out, even if that means taking a spin class at 7am before work.

Sadie Calvano

Writing short stories was kind of like I was cheating the whole time, in some way. I went back and forth between writing the novels and sort of sneaking out to work on stories occasionally. These stories were written over the last 10 years or so, as I was taking breaks from the novels I've written.

Dan Chaon

A Quote by Alice Mattison

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