Erica Jong Quotes

Music’s the soundtrack of my life and has been since I was a teenager. There’s always music. If I’m not playing it, I’m listening to it. With my writing... sometimes it inspires a story, sometimes it highlights something I’m working on, sometimes it simply helps me stay in the narrative mood.

I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"

Book ideas are like planes, lined up to approach the runway. Some never leave the gate, but others move quickly to the front of the line. It was like that with The Four Purposes. Honestly, I cannot remember the moment I had the idea for the book; perhaps because it emerged like a green shoot emerging from the soil of my subconscious. But it seemed important enough to begin the flow of words that eventually shaped themselves into this new book.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

I write anywhere - when I have an idea, it's hard not to write. I used to be kind of precious about where I wrote. Everything had to be quiet and I couldn't be disturbed; it really filled my day.

I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.

When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.

Music is an important part of my writing process.

I don't have goals when writing books, apart from getting to the end. I have rather vague ideas about how I want things to feel, I'm big on ambience. I have a title, a beginning and a probable ending and go from there.

I think a conceptual idea comes to me first - something I've been mulling over a lot right before I feel like writing a book - and then the characters start to develop around it.

Business book writing for me is when some set of ideas gets stuck in my mind, I write a book about it. I haven't got a theory and I haven't got a framework.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It's just a matter of joining the dots.

My next book - each one while I'm working on it - dances in my mind and thrills me at every turn. If it didn't, why would I write it?

When I write, I tend to be quite cut off from the world. At that point of time, I'm not thinking about editors, publishers or readers. I write the story the way it comes to me.

It usually helps me write by reading - somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

Most of my books begin with a nap on my couch here, when I dream up characters and story lines, and then I write on my laptop in the recliner and handle the business side of email at my desk, which is sagging in the middle - maybe from so many words?

In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.

I think I always have many ideas for books in my head. It's like a forest full of mushrooms. Some are big, some are small.

The process is different for every book, but there are similarities. I always draw from the inside out. I don't plot them ahead of time, and I'm always surprised by things that happen in my books.

There's always a problem when you write, something you're trying to resolve, and sometimes a view can be inspiring.

In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.

I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration. A book, especially a longer book, it's a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It's a vision of the whole thing.