Writing And Discipline Quotes

#1. In fact, "talent" is as common as mud; what's rare is the motivation to sit down and actually do something with one's talent, the discipline to do it regularly, and the persistence to stick with it until it's finished.

Patricia C. Wrede

#2. A writer never finds the time to write. A writer makes it. If you don't have the drive, the discipline, and the desire, then you can have all the talent in the world, and you aren't going to finish a book.

Nora Roberts

#3. The whole idea is that the combination of tight activity and slack activity allows me to be both productive and creative at the same time. In the four years that I am actually working in a proper job, I am earning money and I'm also writing with a lot of discipline on the side.

Karan Bajaj

#4. Writing for me is a form of spiritual discipline and creative vision, a means of being in the world and giving one's love to it without compromise or dilution.

Aberjhani

#5. I'm not a big believer in disciplined writers. What does discipline mean? The writer who forces himself to sit down and write for seven hours every day might be wasting those seven hours if he's not in the mood and doesn't feel the juice. I don't think discipline equals creativity.

Bret Easton Ellis

#6. As I started writing about loss and grief, I was taking what felt unmanageable and using my songwriting, my sense of poetry and discipline, to try and make it manageable.

Rosanne Cash

#7. Art can't be taught; passion can't be taught; discipline can't be taught; but craft can be taught. And writing is both an art and a craft.

Elizabeth George

#8. People think writers are always feeling inspired. That's only about 5% of it. 95% is the daily discipline to just sit and write.

Bruce Van Horn

#9. What I like about teaching is the discipline of finding words to unpack the artistic process. And I admire the drive in students who want to write, the mystery of how artistic talent unfolds.

Alison Hawthorne Deming

#10. Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don't talk about doing it. Do it. Finish.

E.L. Konigsburg

#11. The only difference between a writer and someone who wants to be a writer is discipline.

Ayelet Waldman

#12. I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight.

Venerable Bede

#13. The act of writing if one is conscious of legibility is a wonderful discipline. Our minds, which roil like captured oceans, are forced to order themselves and to send coherent messages through our fingers...writing is like yoga or Thai Chi; it forces our bodies to obey our minds.

Edward St Paige

#14. I write every moment that is humanly possible. I write every day and every night. The only discipline I lack is the discipline is to quit.

Barbara Kingsolver

#15. Lectio divina provides us with a discipline, developed and handed down by our ancestors, for recovering the context, restoring the intricate
web of relationships to which the Scriptures give witness but that are so easily lost or obscured in the act of writing.

Eugene H. Peterson

#16. Writing for Mills and Boon taught me a lot of discipline. You have to produce books in a short time scale and four a year, and it teaches you a lot.

Penny Jordan

#17. I find if you're targeting Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X right from the start, your code will probably work anywhere else that you might try it later ... Writing code that is cross-platform from the start requires more discipline, but I find it is worth the effort.

Ryan C. Gordon

#18. It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entomological specimen, is achieved through regular, disciplined practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools and the discipline to bring it out.

Ann Patchett

#19. Fearlessness, absolutely. Discipline. You also need open-minded creativeness that lets everything in. You never want to lose a word or a phrase, yet every one should count. Always the best language possible. And, finally, knowing when to leave it alone. Stop when it's done.

Ben Harper

#20. To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time.

Harper Lee

#21. Good writing like good sex requires discipline.

Chloe Thurlow

#22. I'm not one for walking the beaches humming a melody. I love the discipline of sitting in the studio, writing and listening. That is my domain.

Enya

#23. Writing is like gardening. Planting, watering, and weeding are not enough. You have to prune if you want growth.

Ron Brackin

#24. Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.

Peter Benchley

#25. Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

Stephen King

#26. When I'm writing a book, I don't have any responsibility to anyone. I'm solitary. I'm writing on my own. I write by hand. And I write every day. I mean, it's part of my daily discipline.

Patti Smith

#27. Architecture is a discipline that takes time and patience. If one spends enough years writing complex novels one might be able, someday, to construct a respectable haiku.

Thom Mayne

#28. To this day George Sr. is the soft touch and I'm the enforcer. I'm the one who writes them a letter and says 'Shape up!' He writes, 'You're marvelous.'

Barbara Bush

#29. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline.

Ernest Hemingway,

#30. The artist cannot hold back; it is impossible, because writing, or any other discipline of art, involves participation in suffering, in the ills and the occasional stabbing joys that come from being part of the human drama.

Madeleine L'Engle

#31. The most important lesson my parents taught me is that writing is a job, one that requires discipline and commitment. Most of the time it's a fun job, a wonderful job, but sometimes it isn't, and those are the days that test you.

Jesse Kellerman

#32. You're not going to be a writer someday. You're a writer today. Discipline yourself to write and take time to enjoy writing. Do it a lot. Have fun with it. Begin now.

Jack Heffron

#33. Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the most necessary discipline for novelists who burn with the ambition to get better.

Pat Conroy

#34. For the kind of places I've written for and the kind of writing that I've done, the general way to think about your audience is to think about somebody who's like yourself, but in a completely different discipline.

Louis Menand

#35. The trick to my writing, it turned out, was doing so exclusively in bed. The minute I even dared to discipline myself and write at the desk, I produced mounds of nonsense. Yet, sitting in bed, I wrote easily, effortlessly, fluidly. I became the master of perfect indiscipline.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

#36. The discipline of writing a memoir comes in the editing. This is where I cut, slash, and burn - where my creative mind is transformed into a ruthless one. No word escapes my scrutiny. It is here where I see what boundaries need to be set.

Terry Tempest Williams

#37. Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation - the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.

Peter De Vries

#38. I continue to write. It's just one of those things that I do. I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore and that's no good.

Greg Lake

#39. You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.

Michael Chabon

#40. Have the discipline to listen to and to trust your instincts.

A.D. Posey

#41. Some people may be more gifted than others, but excellence in writing, as in any art form or craft, involves discipline and practice.

James B. Stewart

#42. A man who writes a story is forced to put into it the best of his knowledge and the best of his feeling. The discipline of the written word punishes stupidity and dishonesty. A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you.

John Steinbeck

#43. We have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can-if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough-be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being.

May Sarton

#44. Writing requires discipline, detailed thinking, good communication skills, a plan of action, clear vision, and a passion for people. CMT Stibbe

C.M.T. Stibbe

#45. By and large I think art is made by people who have discipline married to talent in sufficiently large amounts to work even if they don't feel like it. Anybody can get maudlin and decide to write poetry at 11 at night; the question is, can you do it at 8:30 on a Monday morning..?

Clive Barker

#46. Next morning I went over to Paul's for coffee and told him I had finished. "Good for you," he said without looking up. "Start the next one today.

Steven Pressfield

#47. And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.

Lawrence Lessig