A writer never....

[Paul Whybrow]

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 your book.

Nora Roberts

 

[Hannah F]

And she certainly must follow her own mantra with over 200 novels under her belt!

 

[Eva Ulian]

200 NOVELS? WOW! And I've never heard of her... or her books. But I've heard of Gone With the Wind and Margaret Mitchell wrote precious little else. Which goes to show- is it worth spleening your guts out when just one book will achieve what two hundred don't?

 

[Robinne Weiss]

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 your book.

Nora Roberts

Yep. When I told my mother (who used to write a lot--essays and scripts for a TV show) I was closing my interpretation business to focus on writing, her one comment was, "Well, you've certainly got the discipline for it." If I didn't treat writing as a business and force myself to 'go to work' and work to deadlines, I'd still be pottering away at that first novel (especially now I'm only writing part time again).

 

[Katie-Ellen]

200 NOVELS? WOW! And I've never heard of her... or her books. But I've heard of Gone With the Wind and Margaret Mitchell wrote precious little else. Which goes to show- is it worth spleening your guts out when just one book will achieve what two hundred don't?

And that is exactly it, Eva.

Books are products to shift, the same as boxes of cornflakes, and then there are the standouts. Even the great writers often have just the one really great, standout story in them. Everything else they write is a paler re-hash, and now they are wearing a collar, because the great machine wants feeding, for money for entertainment. Not knocking it. But it's something different.

 

[Eva Ulian]

And that is exactly it, Eva.

Books are products to shift, the same as boxes of cornflakes, and then there are the standouts. Even the great writers often have just the one really great, standout story in them. Everything else they write is a paler re-hash, and now they are wearing a collar, because the great machine wants feeding, for money for entertainment. Not knocking it. But it's something different.

Yes, I imagined it to be so. Pity. because that downgrades the title of "Writer" to very little more than a clerk. When we think of the great stories that "real" writers have written, I feel this system does nothing but impoverish the world with the lust for dollars.