Peter Straub Quotes

I write novels and other things.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

I want to write books.

I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it. You may be ashamed of it later, but that's another story.

I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

You become a great writer by writing.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

I can draw pencil lines to show something is moving, but if I'm writing, I struggle with how to write it. The boy ran down the hallway? The boy ran quickly down the hallway? The boy ran down the marble hallway? I agonize over the words. So my editor works very hard. I'm lucky to have her.

I like writing books. I really love words. I love to read.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

I have a lot of books I want to write.

When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.

I love the essay. It's my favorite genre to work in.

The problem is once you've written the opening paragraph and worked out how the rest of the story will go in your head, there's nothing in it for you. I write in longhand using disposable fountain pens on the right-hand side of the notebook for the first draft, then I rewrite some of the sentences and paragraphs on the left-hand side.

I had been attempting novels since I was 14 but always ran out of steam. High hopes, poor craftsmanship.

I try to leave out the parts readers skip.

I write and write and write, and then I edit it down to the parts that I think are amusing, or that help the storyline, or I'll write a notebook full of ideas of anecdotes or story points, and then I'll try and arrange them in a way that they would tell a semi-cohesive story.

I love the structural part of the writing process.

No, I have to really focus, especially when I'm writing because I wanna be good at it.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

There are writers whose first drafts are so lean, so skimpy, that they must go back and add words, sentences, paragraphs to make their fiction intelligible or interesting. I don't know any of these writers.