A Quote by Ramez Naam
If you only write when the muse strikes, you won't get anything done. You have to write consistently, when your schedule says you should. And that's hard.
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Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.
Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.
My approach to comedy is that whenever it comes to me, I write it. With 'The Daily Show,' you have to write stuff every day, and that's a new experience for me, to not only write on someone else's schedule but a daily schedule.
I believe writers should be able to write about anything - anything - but there is also a sense in which your lived experience shapes what you write and what you don't write.
You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.
What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.
When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You're not likely ever to get all these things, and you're not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don't, but that is -- and should be -- your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.
But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.
Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. To think of a plot that is, as Aristotle says, surprising and yet inevitable, is a lot, lot, lot of work.
Whatever you have lived, you can write & by hard work & a genuine apprenticeship, you can learn to write well; but what you have not lived you cannot write, you can only pretend to write it.
I write in the mornings. I get up every morning at about six in the morning and write until nine, hop in the shower and go to work. Nighttime I usually reserve for re-reading what I've done that morning. I would be lying if I said I stuck to that schedule every single day.
I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.
Write every day. You don't have to write about anything specific, but you should exercise your writing muscle constantly.
I don't get writer's block. I don't try to write anything; when something comes, I write it. I just practice and when I get an idea I write it down.
I have a hard time expressing myself when I'm emotional, so my family has done this forever. We write each other letters if we're fighting or whatever. And my dad's a writer, but we write each other letters because we feel that it's easier to get out what you're truly saying if you write it down.
You can't write anything you want. Once you write that first chapter, then everything else is determined. You can write anything you want, but only one thing works.
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