A Quote by Ralph Keyes

Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.

Ralph Keyes

Quote Topics

Better Discover Friend Inspiration Inspired Over Routine Serious Than Time Write Writers

Quote Author

Ralph Keyes
Irish - Author
Born: 1945

You'd better discover a more important motive than publication for your work or else you'll go crazy. My sense is that you'll be writers only if you are convinced that to write is something for which there is no substitute in your life. You must therefore be ambitious for your work rather than for its promotion. The good news here is that if you assign secondary importance to publishing and primary to writing itself, you will write better, and will thus increase your odds of getting publishing.

Sydney Lea

I've always found it best to have a routine. I go to my study at the same time every day and climb into my bay window. I may not be inspired every day, but on the days I am, I need to be in place to write. If I'm not particularly inspired, I'll revise or do research or correspondence.

Diane Ackerman

Real writers - serious writers with serious subjects, who earn their living at it - all seem to write in small rooms with that knotty-pine 1974 look on the top-floor rear of their houses. Rooms with views.

Peter York

Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how to write and what to write and what not to write.

Deb Caletti

That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.

Renata Adler

The inspiration for my novels comes from the depths of a creative well, based on asking myself questions over and over. I try to write something different each time I sit down to write; I try to surprise the readers.

Nicholas Sparks

Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.

Gaston Bachelard

People are rushed and inspired by the success of Indian writers, and are falling over themselves to write novels. Every Indian is writing a novel right now. No one wants to revise.

Karan Mahajan

I don't have some songwriting formula that I kinda go by. Usually it just comes by way of inspiration. Sometimes I'm inspired by a melody first and sometimes I'm inspired by a lyric. Typically, I'm inspired by an idea for a lyric and then after we get the lyric going then we write a melody to it.

Natalie Grant

I used to go over to my friend's house and we'd watch VCR tapes, three of them a day, and I was like, "I could come up with better stories than this." And I've wanted to write films ever since.

Michelle Rodriguez

Completing any writing project, particularly a novel, is a daunting prospect. Many people become frozen by the prospect. Others keep waiting for the right time. Some wait for the spark of inspiration. Even experienced writers find it is easier to do anything other than actually write.

Bob Mayer

A muse is something that serves a poet well early in his or her career. In later years one writers out of one's own driven inspiration. One learns to find inspiration rather than waiting for it to come for a visit. I can find inspiration almost anywhere.

Clarence Major

Discover the time of day when you write best, and write then. For me it's about 7 am to noon. For other people it's overnight. Try not to do anything other than write between those times.

Jon Ronson

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.