Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.
I don't get on with novelists, don't enjoy their company. Once you've worked for a publisher, you understand the species, see them in their natural habitat, and it's not always pretty.
Critics should be to actors what ornithologists are to birds: they can write all they want, but it shouldn't affect them.
Writing novels is largely about endurance and patience. I take a lot of breaks, hit walls, and go do something else while I think things through. But I do it every day, and I try to treat it as a job, something that is not dictated by whimsy or muses.
To sing a song is quite different than to write a poem. I'm not and never will be a novelist, but to write a novel is not the same thing as writing a play. There is a difference in form, but essentially what you're after is the same thing.
Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.
I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms before you every day, in every sentence.
My writing often contains souvenirs of the day - a song I heard, a bird I saw - which I then put into the novel.
Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.