I’m a great lover of quotations. I once compiled a book of quotations on all aspects of health and called it Words of Wellness: A Treasury of Quotations for Well-Being. It was published in 1991, before the Internet and search engines burst onto the world scene. Today a person can find any type of quotation on the Internet within seconds. I sometimes browse the Internet to see what other writers have said about writing. Today I found six quotes that coincided perfectly with my thoughts. The seventh and final quote is the only one I didn’t find today, I came across it many years ago.

“Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don’t try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there’s a chance you’ll never get past the first chapter.” –Iain Banks

“How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how:If you practice an art faithfully it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.” –William Saroyan

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in the human condition.” –Graham Greene

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”–Joan Didion

“When I finish a first draft, it’s always just as much of a mess as it’s always been.” –Michael Chabon

“The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them. A young writer must cross many psychological barriers to acquire confidence in his capacity to produce good work–especially his first full-length book–and he cannot do this by staring at a piece of blank paper, searching for the perfect sentence.” –Paul Johnson

And lastly, I came across the following quote a few decades ago. E.B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and co-author with William Strunk of The Elements of Style, was stuck on a story as a cub reporter for the Seattle Times in the early 1920s. He approached his editor, a Mr. Johns, and asked how he could get unstuck. Johns thought for a moment and replied, “Just say the words.”

Whenever I get bogged down trying to express a word, sentence or thought, I think of the advice given to E.B. White and, just like magic, it gets me going again.

I sometimes write as fast as I can, as I’m doing now, to see what my subconscious will let out of the cage.

I’m sitting straight in my ergonomic office chair. My desk is cluttered with papers. I have so much I want to do as a writer. I have two novels–A Class of Leaders and Highway Sailor–that I’ve been hyping to agents, unsuccessfully, so I’m seriously thinking of self-publishing both books. I have a 3000-word piece to send to different magazines that I’m calling “Hip-Op Journal: How I Became a Normal Human Being Again After Two Hip Operations.” I have a collection of short stories to revise and put in order. I have a dozen bookstores to call to see how many copies they’ve sold of my latest book Write Now! and if they need more copies. I have plenty of things to do. What amazes me is that I’m looking forward to doing all of them.

The phone is ringing, but I’m not answering it. Most of the calls are from solicitors. That’s why Joan and I let the answering machine take the calls. If it’s someone we know, we’ll pick up the phone. But while I’m doing this speedwriting, I’m not picking up for anyone, because there have already been too many distractions for me today.

“Delay is natural to a writer. I walk around, straightening pictures on the wall, rugs on the floor–as though not until everything in the world is lined up and perfectly true could anybody reasonable expect me to set a word down on paper.” —E.B. White

Just like E.B. White, it took me from waking up this morning to 3 p.m. to start setting words down on paper.

Is it work to write without stopping? Not at all–it’s fun. I can say anything I want. I don’t have to write an essay connected to the writing process because I’m “in” the process this very moment.

So far I’ve received nearly 150 comments from people who have visited my website and have read my pieces on writing. A fair number of them have even bought my two books on writing: Write Now! and Morning Pages. I’d say that’s pretty good feedback. It’s a sign of what the Internet can do and how much people are interested in writing.

I didn’t write about the writing process today, I let my subconscious take over. It’s exhilarating to write as fast as my fingers will go. Whoever is reading this, you should try it sometime.

My wife Joan and I are on a Southwest Airlines flight taking us from Chicago back to San Francisco. There’s a girl of six or seven and her mother sitting right behind us. The girl has an incredibly screechy loud voice. Joan hasn’t had to listen to the torture I’ve been through for the past two hours because she’s been plugged into her iPod the whole time.

There is no doubt that the young girl is in love with the sound of her own voice which happens to be the most shrill, piercing voice I’ve ever heard in my life. My ears rang every time she opened her mouth. Her voice was as ear splitting as a siren. If someone had held up an empty wine glass, she could have probably shattered it with that voice of hers. The mother was so unaware of her daughter’s penetrating voice. That voice not only infringed upon my eardrums and thoughts for two hours, but I’m sure it affected every person seated in our general area.

The mother still hasn’t told her daughter to relax and be quiet for a while. I believe she refuses to do so because she thinks she’s a caring, loving mother who is trying to make her precious and precocious little daughter forget that we’re 36,000 feet in the air on a somewhat bumpy flight. I blame her for not realizing how much her daughter’s voice is bothering others.

Oh, I turned around in my seat a couple of times to show my displeasure, but not a peep came out of me. I was actually too shy to intrude upon their intrusiveness. I’m usually the first person to speak up when unthinking people are oblivious to others. I was hoping another passenger would say something–except no one did. I thought of asking the flight attendant to tell them to be quiet–but I didn’t. It just shows how extremely tolerant people are of children on planes. An idea even occurred to me to tell the mother that her daughter’s voice carried so well that I thought she had a great future as an opera singer.

So how am I able to write with those two chatterboxes still going non-stop behind me? Earplugs! I couldn’t think straight until Joan dug into her purse and handed me a pair of earplugs. I was almost on the verge of getting out of my seat and telling that mother and daughter team to “Shut up already!” Because of these earplugs, I don’t have to vent my anger on them. Instead, I’m venting it on this page, which is the only course an angry writer should take.

I once knew a poet, Sid Lyman, who was the Poet Laureate of Portland, Oregon, when I lived there for a few years. It was my honor to dub him “The Port Laureate of Poetland.” Anyway, the two of us were talking about deadlines one evening, when Sid said, “I don’t understand why people call them deadlines. The word should be lifelines.”

Sid was absolutely correct. Lifeline is surely the more appropriate word, but since deadline is so prevalent in our society today, I’ll stick to that word for now.

My favorite writer of all time, William Saroyan, always set a deadline for himself. He churned out a story a day. He wrote his famous play, The Time of Your Life, in six days. Each of his novels or memoirs was written in around thirty days. Deadlines made Saroyan an extremely prolific writer. I met him twice in my life. In our first meeting, he explained his philosophy of deadlines to me:

“I was talking to this writer and he asked me how I wrote The Time of Your Life in six days. My answer to him was, “How did you write your book in six months?’ Time is relative. If you set a deadline for yourself, then the same thing will come out in six days as it will in six months:or even six years.”

I’ve set a deadline for myself to write an essay on writing once a week for 52 weeks. When Tuesday rolls around, I know it’s time to finish a piece and post it on my website. Deadlines are a godsend–they help me keep writing. Deadlines give me life. They force me to concentrate, really concentrate, on the goal at hand. Deadlines have made me produce more stories, essays and books than I could have ever imagined. That’s why deadlines, as Sid Lyman once said, should be called lifelines.

It was hard for me to sit down and write today, but I finally got to it–around eight o’clock this evening.

First of all, I had a nine o’clock dental appointment. When I got home around eleven, a man was installing a new furnace in our basement. Joan had let him in and then left for her classes at San Francisco State University. Whenever I sat down at my desk, the furnace man would call up to interrupt my train of thought: “Can you help me lift something?” “I need you to tell me where I can make a hole in the wall.” “Can I use your bathroom?” “Do you have a broom I can use?” I couldn’t concentrate for one minute on what I had to do. So I reluctantly threw in the towel and assisted him until he completed the job. Then, after he left, because I had promised Joan, I drove to the produce market to buy some fruit and vegetables. When I got home, she was in the kitchen cooking dinner. We ate. After eating, I washed the dishes.

What is a writer to do in a world that is trying its best, day and night, to stop him from sitting down and writing? I’m talking about interruptions like phone calls, the doorbell ringing, errands, appointments, noises and chores. To overcome these obstacles, a writer has to clear his mind of everything and focus on one thing and one thing only–writing. If you don’t focus on your writing, as you can see from what happened to me today, the world will prevent you from doing what you have to do.

It’s 9:45 in the evening. I’m sitting at my computer to write about time and the writing process. I usually don’t write around this time of the day. At this hour you can usually find me checking my e-mails or watching the news on Cable, a show on HBO or a San Francisco Giants baseball game.

Why are you writing at this late hour?

“Who are you?”

It doesn’t matter who I am. Just answer my question.

“The reason I’m writing now is that I have a strong itch to write. I have something of great importance to tell all writers about the best time of the day to write.“

What’s the best time of the day to write?

“You should know the answer to that.”

If you have something to say, then say it. Don’t toy with me.

“OK, OK. I was sitting at my desk all afternoon, dawdling, dozing off at times, not knowing exactly what I wanted to say about time and the writing process, but I knew I had to write something because today is Tuesday, and I promised myself to write an essay about the writing process every Tuesday for a whole year. I was going to–”

Say it already!

“What?”

The best time of the day to write is:

“Any time of the day is the best time to write. It could be early in the morning, after lunch, after dinner, after midnight–any time is always the right time to write.”

Is that all you have to say?

“Just one more thing. Of course any time of the day is the right time to write, but I think it’s best to write around some certain time so you can get a rhythm or habit going.”

Writing has made me walk and walking has made me write. When I quit the teaching profession at the age of 29 to become a writer, it never occurred to me that I would also become a walker. Every day, while working on my first novel, I went outside to go for a walk. Taking a walk came as natural to me as eating and sleeping.

Nothing beats a walk. It’s a great exercise, whether you walk slowly or briskly. As an extra bonus, walking leaves a writer free to take in the flowers, the sky, the clouds, the air and colors. Best of all, though, you can think and ponder and come up with ideas while walking.

[I'm stopping right here. Writing about walking has made me want to go for a walk.I know I haven't finished this piece yet, but it's getting late and I have to get outside before it turns dark and before my wife Joan comes home. Please excuse me.]

I’m back. Joan and I have eaten dinner and just a minute ago I finished cleaning up in the kitchen. I had to break away earlier because the day was so beautiful that I had to get outside before it slipped away.

“Love and Marriage,” a song by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen that Frank Sinatra made famous, kept going through my mind on my walk. “Love and marriage,” sang Sinatra, “go together like a horse and carriage.” On my walk, I wanted to come up with as good a simile for “writing and walking” as Cahn and Van Heusen did for “love and marriage.” I was confident I could do it.

As I was walking along my favorite route–the Great Highway next to the Pacific Ocean–I stopped several times to write down the following similes that popped into my head:

Writing and walking go together like wheeling and dealing:like throwing and catching:like buying and selling:like growing and knowing.

Here’s the one I like best: Writing and walking go together like sleeping and dreaming.

Last month I went to see the San Francisco Giants play the San Diego Padres at their home opening game of the baseball season. My friend and neighbor Bernie Schneider invited me to take the place of his wife who came down with the flu. It was a great honor to attend Opening Day in San Francisco.What I witnessed, though, was a downer. The Giants lost, 8-4, scoring all their runs in the bottom of the ninth inning. It was their fifth loss in six games. The team looked out of sync, mistake-prone and unsure of themselves. In short, they looked pathetic. After the game, I said to Bernie, “This is the worst Giants team I’ve ever seen. They look like minor-leaguers out there.”

But the Giants, to the amazement of the hometown fans, bounced back and won their next three games.You could see their confidence growing with each win.

That’s what writing is all about–confidence. Confidence is so important, especially in the writing process. When you have confidence you write freely and loosely, you’re not worried about an outcome, you’re putting words down for the joy and pleasure of it. And what arises out of that joy and pleasure is discovering a part of yourself you never knew existed. You’ll say to yourself, “Did I write that? I didn’t know I could write so well.”

Each time you have an urge to write and actually sit down to write, your confidence will grow like wildflowers in springtime or like a Giants baseball team at the beginning of a new season.

“I love the honesty and authenticity of Joseph Sutton’s voice. The fear of the writer is revealed in his book Write Now!, mirroring the fear of humans who don’t usually say it out loud but who need the writer to say it for them.” —Jo-e Simon, artist and writer

First drafts for a majority of teenagers are usually their final drafts. They don’t know what a revision is unless someone shows them. I know this because I was once a high school teacher. Me, I go over a piece–an essay, poem, story or chapter–maybe 10, 20, 50 or 100 times before it becomes a final draft. Slow, man, slow is what I am. I constantly go over a piece because I want the reader to understand what I’ve written. I also want my writing to read as smooth as a rose petal, leaving an impression that this writer makes writing seem so effortless.

It’s important for me to revise and keep revising until I’m completely satisfied with what I’ve written.

Unlike most teenagers, my final drafts come after much revision because, to be honest, I don’t want to make a fool of myself.

For the past few years I find that writing my first drafts flow much better while sitting in a coffeehouse, library or even my car.

I’m writing this piece in my 9-year-old Toyota Corolla parked at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, 100 yards from the Pacific Ocean. It’s a beautiful spring day. The sun is shining in a bright blue sky. People are walking, jogging, skating and riding their bikes on the promenade in front of me. My car windows are rolled down to let the cool breeze waft in. I’m sitting in my car’s passenger seat (the steering wheel gets in my way if I try to write in the driver’s seat). There’s a throw pillow on my lap, and on top of that is my 8 1/2″ x 11″ spiral notebook/journal. There is no phone to answer, no refrigerator to grab a snack from, no Internet or e-mail to get entangled in and no household or garden chores to distract. There’s just fresh air, my journal, a pen, people passing by and a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean before me.

I lead a very quiet existence, which, if you think about it, is necessary for a writer, except we humans are social by nature. To write first drafts outside of my house, even in my car, is a great treat for me because it gives me a chance to be among my fellow human beings while I’m doing what I love best.