Lisa Lutz Quotes

I tell my students that with a 200-page novel, you are going to write 100 pages that don't make the final cut. See it as an opportunity, although it took me a while to enjoy that 'lost in the woods' feeling.

Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me.

I personally am a 'discovery writer,' as we're termed, someone who plans the book by writing it and then revising the entire thing. When it comes to saga, this means writing large chunks of prose before any of it coalesces into a book.

Writing takes a lot of patience. It usually takes me a year to write a book. One time, it took me 14 years to write a book, not that I worked on it every day.

It's my job to write the best book I can each month and hand my scripts in. Everything else is beyond my control.

It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.

I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.

For me, most writing consists of siphoning out useless pre-story matter, cutting and cutting and cutting, what seems to be endless rewriting, and what is entailed in all that is patience, and waiting, and false starts, and dead ends, and really, in a way, nerve.

Novel writing is solitary work.

Like many writers, I started by writing short stories. I needed to learn how to write and stories are the most practical way to do this, and less soul-destroying than working your way through a lengthy novel and then discovering it's rubbish.

I think it takes about a million words to make a writer. I mean that you're going to throw away.

Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.

The process of writing a book has given me a whole new reverence for writers. Mechanically, it is a brutal process; emotionally, it's incredibly healing.

Process does matter; you need a process. What it is is up to no one but you. But if you can't sit down, write once upon a time, and go through however many hundred thousand words to get to happily ever after, you're never going to get anywhere.

When I write, I try to capture one of those pivotal moments. If I succeed, I have shifted the reader's view of the world, just a little. The character is not the only one to experience change. That is my job, shifting perceptions, one story at a time. The trouble is, I don't like writing. But I love having written.

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

Every story I write is different. Some are hard. Some aren't. 'Chronicle' was tremendously easy. I have a hard time comparing my process on different things, but I will say this: The more you write, the better you get at it. That's one of the few things that's markedly true.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

To be a writer, you need to like spending a lot of time by yourself in the company of imaginary people.

I would fix other people's lines if they asked me on occasion. The hard part of writing is the architecture of it, getting the story and structuring it. Not the tweaking of lines.

Many people think that it is important to have a title before you begin writing the book, but I think you should never sit around waiting for the right title to strike before you start writing. Crack on with the story, put in the hard work, and the title will come eventually.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

I do want to work on writing, because writing's a skill. Writing is something that you can train yourself to know better. To know yourself better. And it's intimidating as hell.