Dan Chaon Quotes

Writing is always a process of discovery—I never know the end, or even the events on the next page, until they happen. There’s a constant interplay between the imagining and shaping of the story.

I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.

I never plan. I never know what the next page is going to be..... But that's the fun of writing a novel or a story, because I don't know what's going to happen next.

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

I don't begin a novel with a shopping list - the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it.

I don't ever want to impose something on the story. I want the story to tell me.

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

The process of writing a novel is getting to know more about the novel until you know everything about it. And it's been described as a kind of dreamlike state where you're letting the novel make its own shape, and you're putting into it the pleasure of creation, which is intoxicating.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I really want to write another novel, and I am trying to come up with what the story will be. As I learned with 'Groundswell,' I can't force it; I just have to wait for it to come to me.

I never get sick of writing my own stories because there's a certain comfort in knowing you will never run out of material. It's relaxing, actually, to write.

I don't have a name and I don't have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and that should add up to a novel.

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

I think most writers will say that at the start of each book they think, 'I'm not sure I can do this.' But eventually, you reach a magical point where the story suddenly becomes real to you, and you become totally invested in it.

The story grew, got way bigger than the contest rules called for, and next thing I knew I had a book.

When I decide to write a story, I don't think too much about what I want it to be, I just let things come naturally and this is how it turns out. It's just how my subconscious works.

It's kind of a mysterious process, but something will catch my attention, and I'll make a note about it. I may even write a few pages about it, and then I'll put it aside, but I'll sort of keep it in mind. Then as time goes on, other things will gather to it as if it's a magnet, almost, and eventually, there's enough to make the story.

I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.

I never know how a novel is going to end, because you don't really know what's going to be at the bottom of a novel until you excavate it.

I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.