Secondhand experience breaks down a block from the car lot.

If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.

Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life.

I don't believe that a writer 'gets' (takes into the head) an 'idea' (some sort of mental object) 'from' somewhere, and then turns it into words, and writes them on paper. At least in my experience, it doesn't work that way. The stuff has to be transformed into oneself, it has to be composted, before it can grow into a story.

I have decided that the trouble with print is, it never changes its mind.

Art is action. The way I live my life to its highest degree is by writing, the practice of art.

I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.