Richard Hoffman

Commit yourself to a long apprenticeship and do it in secret. Don’t hang out your shingle. Don’t print up business cards. It’s hard enough without putting external social pressure on yourself. Take Whitman’s advice: “Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.” There’s a great deal of bullshit around us.

I worked in a desk chair on rollers and whenever I'd get stuck for more than a half hour or so, I would push off across the hardwood floor — whoosh — and see if anything was happening at one of the other tables, if any of the other projects seemed "alive" that day.

I’m always working on several things at once, as if I’m gardening, tending several different kinds of plants growing from the same soil.

I try to be writing all the time. I mean that in the spirit of being “one on whom nothing is lost.” A lot of the time that means jotting things all day, writing a couple of pages in a notebook, not worrying what it is connected to.
-Richard Hoffman, Advice to Writers interview