“A good writing day is a day when one has written well, and the word counts be damned. Finishing is not the goal. Doing the job well is the goal.”

— Caitlín R. Kiernan

(20 July 2007)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2007
Context: Bad writing days are days when you mean to write and can't, or are interrupted so frequently that nothing gets done. I'm disheartened at how often I see the blogs of aspiring writers bemoaning how slowly a book or story is coming along. They have somehow gotten it in their heads that writing is a thing done quickly, efficiently, like an assembly line with lots of shiny robotic workers. The truth, of course, is that writing is usually slow, and inefficient, and more like trying to find a cube of brown Jello that someone's carelessly dropped into a pig sty. Five hundred words in a day is good. So is a thousand. Or fifteen hundred. A good writing day is a day when one has written well, and the word counts be damned. Finishing is not the goal. Doing the job well is the goal. And I say that as someone with no means of financial support but her writing, as someone who is woefully underpaid for her writing, and as someone with so many deadlines breathing down her neck that she can no longer tell one breather from the other. Sometimes, I forget this, that daily word counts are irrelevant, that writing is not a race to the finish line. One need only write well if one wishes to be a writer. A day when one does not do her best merely so that more may be written, that's a bad writing day.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A good writing day is a day when one has written well, and the word counts be damned. Finishing is not the goal. Doing …" by Caitlín R. Kiernan?

Caitlín R. Kiernan 45

writer 1964

John D. MacDonald book Free Fall in Crimson

Source: Free Fall in Crimson

“My goal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I do not do it. No one lives up to his ideal.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

“When the goal is to help others as well as oneself, we call that idealism.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1990s, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism (1998)
Context: Every decision a person makes stems from the person's values and goals. People can have many different goals and values; fame, profit, love, survival, fun, and freedom, are just some of the goals that a good person might have. When the goal is to help others as well as oneself, we call that idealism.
My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better.

“The drawings [his watercolors] usually succeed in one day or at most two days or they develop difficult and usually don't finish well, then…. [I hope] the end will be as good as the beginning. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) De teekeningen [Roelofs bedoelt zijn aquarellen] lukken mij doorgaans in een dag of hoogstens twee dagen of zij gaan moeijelijk en worden dan meestal niet goed.. ..[ik hoop dat] het eind zoo goed zal zijn als het begin.
In a letter to P. verLoren van Themaat, 30 March, 1867; in Haagsch Gemeentearchief / Municipal Archive of The Hague
1860's

“When a man's bogged down, when the thing he is trying to do isn't working out, then he has to damn good and well change his way of living.”

Sterling Hayden (1916–1986) American actor

Book V : Abysmal Voyage, Ch. 79
Wanderer (1963)
Context: I'll make no bones about it, I'm thinking of quitting analysis. When a man's bogged down, when the thing he is trying to do isn't working out, then he has to damn good and well change his way of living. If you would only hold out some hope to me, then it might be different.
I'll say this, too, that if it hadn't been for you I wouldn’t have turned into a stoolie for J. Edgar Hoover. I don't think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself since the day I did that thing.

“Happiness is not a goal… it's a by-product of a life well lived.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Variant: Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product.
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 95
Context: Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.

“Peacefulness to be found in writing. Why do I not write every day? Partly because I feel I ought to write well and know I can't. But that is not a good enough reason for not writing, if it gains me poise & peace.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 219 (1960)

“One of the things that happens at the speed of light is that people lose their goals in life. So what takes the place of goals and objectives? Well, role-playing is coming in very fast.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Interview between Californian Governor Jerry Brown and Marshall McLuhan, 1977
1970s

“To live is to battle the demons
in the heart as well as the brain.
To write is to preside at
judgement day over one's self.”

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet

At leve er — krig med trolde
i hjertets og hjernens hvælv.
At digte, — det er at holde
dommedag over sig selv.
Et vers (A Verse), inscribed on the volume Poems (1877)
Ibsen may have written this originally in German http://www.ibsen.net/index.gan?id=110602&subid=0 as a dedication to a female reader. It was published in German in Deutsche Rundschau in November 1886:
Leben, das heisst bekriegen
In Herz und Hirn die Gewalten;
Und dichten; über sich selber
Den Gerichtstag halten.

“That's good advice.... all the more so since I may well be forced to leave it [the painting] at that, as so often happens when the model doesn't come back. That's always been my principal concern, to make sure of getting regular sittings. Whenever I start something, I'm always afraid the model will let me down... They come, they pose, then away they go, telling themselves that he can finish it off on his own. Well no, one can't finish anything on one's own, particularly since one only finishes on the day one starts, and that means starting often and having plenty of days available.”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

Quote of Manet c. 1880, recorded by Antonin Proust; as quoted in 'The Importance of Manet's Conceptualization in 'Olympia' and 'The Bar at the Folies-Bergère' http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/manet/arthistory_manet.html, by Charles Moffat, on 'The Art History Archive', c. 2001
1876 - 1883

“A good writing day is a day when one has written well, and the word counts be damned. Finishing is not the goal. Doing the job well is the goal.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Caitlín R. Kiernan 45

Related quotes

Related topics