Professional Writer quotes:

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A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit. -- Richard Bach
I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer. -- China Mieville
Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living. -- Tracy Kidder
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it. -- Leo Rosten
I've been a professional writer for 20 years, and there are contours in that time, crescents and troughs. -- Graham Joyce
As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game. -- Rex Stout
Anyone can write one book: even politicians do it. Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer. -- Len Deighton
I am not a food critic. Or a chef. Or even a professional writer. What I am schooled in the art of, however, is enjoying myself. -- Jewel Staite
Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that. -- Jane Yolen
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.' -- John Updike
The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period. -- Will Self
I never intended to be a professional writer; as the story developed, the one thing I had in my hopes was that this would be something tangible to separate me from the nameless, numbered masses. -- R. A. Salvatore
If you want to be a professional writer then you need to write consistently. Inspiration strikes about once every blue moon which, for me, is once every two and a half to three months, which is when I'll get really and truly inspired about something. -- Christopher Paolini
Chicago is the Great American City, and it was really great to live there during a time of economic expansion and opportunity and growth. I felt like I was living at the center of the world. Unlike New York, no one expects you to be a professional writer. -- John Green
I think I would have been a writer, anyhow, in the sense of having written a story every now and then, or continued writing poetry. But it was the war experience and the two novels I wrote about Vietnam that really got me started as a professional writer. -- Joe Haldeman
My personal opinion is that, if you're a professional writer, that you do have quotas. So every day I do try to write 800-1,200 words. I don't always achieve it, and the reality is that a lot of the words I write will end up on the cutting-room floor. -- Chris Bohjalian
For a professional writer in the Soviet Union, it works this way. First, you have to have something to say - that's the main thing. Second, it's a matter of who publishes you. If your book has real stuff in it, readers will ferret it out, even in a Siberian journal. -- Anatoly Rybakov
One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living. -- David Morrell
I actually started trying to be a professional writer with novels, and I wrote two that exist and are around... kind of. But they never really went anyplace in particular. I still like them both. What it showed me was that you can spend years on a novel, and then it could just be, like, OK, you spent that time and that's that. -- Charles Soule
I'm not the most talented writer in the world. I know that. But I also know that I'm disciplined, that I work my butt off, and that I make myself write as much as I can. Writer's block is a luxury I can't afford. I'm a professional writer, which means that I put my butt in the chair each day, and I write. Simple as that. -- David B. Coe
Scribbler, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own. -- Ambrose Bierce
Really, becoming a writer sounds more like a mental illness than a professional choice. -- Shannon Hale
Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it. -- W. Somerset Maugham
A professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are. -- Philip Pullman
I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration. -- Haruki Murakami
I'm a writer and I also do a lot of professional speaking on risk taking and creativity as well. -- William Gurstelle
Amateurs... venture into scenes that a writer with more experience (and more professional concern) would bypass or eschew altogether. -- Norman Mailer
An editor is like a professional reader, and as I became a better reader, I also became a better writer. -- Karen Thompson Walker
A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job. -- Jamaica Kincaid
Here's the bottom line; writers write. Sometimes words flow easily. Sometimes it's like sloughing through mud. Either way a professional writer keeps writing. -- P. C. Cast
At some point if you're a professional writer, no matter what, it always comes down to you staring at the blank page by yourself. -- Marc Guggenheim
It is perfectly possible to be a professional director or a professional writer and not to be an artist: merely a sort of executor of other people's ideas. -- Andrei Tarkovsky
To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man. -- Langston Hughes
And the old horror of being a professional writer, and the usual stench of words that goes with it, is begining to drive me out of my seat. (Buddy) -- J. D. Salinger
You count a man's U.S. Amateur titles after he starts winning professional majors. That's something any intelligent golf writer with a sense of history is supposed to know. -- Dan Jenkins
To practice - write each and every day if possible - then try to attend professional writer's conferences where you can learn your craft, get to know fellow writers, and meet editors and agents. -- James Dashner

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