John Burnside Quotes

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.

I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time.

My stories are never quite good enough.

The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction - that, of course, is a permanent part of me now.

Oh how I wish I could be as obsessive as Carrie from 'Homeland' when I'm writing a book! That would save me a lot of trouble during the revision process.

Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.

I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book.

I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.

There's pressure to come up with something genius every time. I feel like I keep letting myself down with my Twitter posts. I have to start keeping a journal of rough drafts of prophetic ideas about the world.

I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.

Someday I would like to be the kind of writer who barrels through a draft, but I can't even seem to barrel through an interview like this, so I imagine I have a long way to go.

I'm impossible when a book is taking shape. Well, actually, I'm despicable.

I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing.

I want to be a better writer. I want to learn and grow, to know how to tell stories in a different and more challenging way. I've learned it doesn't get easier each time. It actually gets harder.

I write really slowly, and my lines are really, really terrible all the time. It takes so long for me to get them to be where I won't be embarrassed to sing them, and then feel like they're great.

I like movies. I've written screenplays as a sort of procrastination thing for me. Like I'll work for a couple months on this idea that's been kicking around and then like 30 pages in I'll just go try a novel because it's a lot easier. That's what I know. So why am I killing myself?

It drives me crazy to do readings of my books, because if I read anything I've written in the past, I'd like to almost rewrite everything. If I could, I'd completely rewrite Fargo Rock City, and every sentence would be just slightly different. In all likelihood, most of them wouldn't be any better. Some of them would just be changed back to whatever form they used to be, before I second-guessed myself the first time.

I found that I could write two kinds of short stories: I could write very absurd, kind of surrealistic, funny stories; or I could write very dark, realistic - hyper-realistic - stories. I was never happy with that, because I couldn't meld the two.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

As a writer, it's a great narrative tool to have that character who is slightly detached but at the same time observant of his reality, because I think that's pretty much what being a writer is - being there, watching and internalizing.

You think you have some stable talent that will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can't imagine that moment when it suddenly will. Gradually, gradually you gain that confidence.

What's funny about that is when I was writing Twilight just for myself and not thinking of it as a book, I was not thinking about publishing, and yet at the same time I was casting it in my head. Because when I read books, I see them very visually.