When you're in a band with three writers, three great writers, you only get one third of the writer thing. So that's the whole reason that I did a solo career. And that's, you know, when I told Fleetwood Mac I was going to do that, they were of course terrified that I would do that record and then that I would quit.
I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist.
After a while, if you're a writer, you want to start appearing in the bookstores of the place you're living in.
I'm a writer! If you work in an office, it dampens you. It makes you fit a routine. The effect of being a writer is not dissimilar to being long-term unemployed. And everyone knows that is not good for you.
I definitely don't see myself as an actor. I don't even have it on my passport. I've got 'writer and electrician' on my passport. I don't want anyone to think I'm an actor.
As the years went by I became a writer and illustrator, although exclusively of fantasies.
In the family, writing wasn't anything anyone understood - being a writer in the real world? How could it be? We didn't have those mirrors.
I'm not a 'long writer' and have never wanted to write a novel or even a novella. Poetry, like flash fiction, provides a readily accessible canvas to play with. Whether to express an emotion or share a vignette, these forms are often interchangeable.
I'm not the kind of writer that can write eight hours a day... I'm the kind of writer that the more time I have, the less efficient I am.
I don't see myself as an artist, as a writer. The sort of writing that I do, which is popular fiction, it's work. I have contracts to fulfil, and I have deadlines to meet.
The idea is not enough. And the most annoying thing for me as a writer is that people will come up to me and say, 'Hey, I've got a great idea for a book. I'm not a writer, but I've got a great story.'
In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.
For a writer, life is always too short to write. I will just try my best during what remains of my life.
I get writer's block all the time. The only way I can write what I consider to be good lyrics is to put myself through the mill.
I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'
The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be willing to fail.
The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.
Being a writer involves writing. You've got to commit to sitting down and writing instead of Xbox or Netflix.
I'm a writer, and what I do is write. I wasn't able to do anything else.
I've wanted to be a writer since I was seven, but I didn't grow up in family where people aspired to live as writers.
Of course you bank on your experience, but as a sounding board. It isn't that you write down what happens to you every day. You wouldn't be a writer if you did that.
I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.
We're always observing, and we're cautious people. We really want attention, but at the same time, we're ashamed of wanting attention. All those bizarre qualities of being outside are necessary for being a writer.
Sometimes you go for weeks without writing successfully, and you don't feel like a writer anymore. When friends ask me how my week was or how I'm doing, I think back on it, and I've just been by myself. Like, I'm just a sketch.
There can be no better prize for a writer than one awarded by an international book fair.
I always wanted to find my voice and claim my tone, but I was doing it through the steps of being a TV writer. I had the executive producer title. I was running the room.
I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.
I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist.
I always tell writers that it's good to have an area of expertise. It's a really practical answer, I know, but know about science or about sports or about medicine, so you can work as a science writer or a sports writer. Don't just know about yourself.
It's helpful for me to get ideas - the physical action of painting. Sometimes it frees up your writer brain. It's nice for me now that the writing has become a serious career that painting can become more like a hobby.
I think of myself now as a writer, although I wouldn't go as far as to say 'novelist' because that sounds like a Victorian person.
I think of myself as a very lazy writer, though other people see it differently.
I majored in journalism at Arizona State University, where I began writing the columns I write now, but I cannot, in good conscience, refer to myself as a writer. I'm a columnist, maybe a journalist, I guess I'm an author, but writer... no. That's not up to me to call myself, that's rather lofty. It's for the reader to decide.
As a writer, I am constantly aware that I take my life in my hands with everything I do and say. It's just a fact of life. For me it always has been.
I think Labrinth is an amazing writer and an amazing singer. His voice is just so magnetic. There are so many people that I would work with inside and outside of pop.
The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing.
