Donald E. Westlake Quotes

The way I think of my work is that I have to think up the way to tell a story, starting from scratch. The changes in the industry concern me in a general way because I think civilization is doomed.

Writer's block to me is where you stop because you're afraid to go forward because you're not sure of what really should be happening next and you think, my gosh, if I choose this... you've got a hundred millions of avenues you could possibly go down but it's all an assess of characters.

When I start writing a novel, I have no sense of direction, no idea, really nothing.

I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!

'The Immigrant Story,' which took me about twenty-five years to write, was a very simple story, but I couldn't think of how to tell it. Then twenty years after I started it, I found this one page and realized it was going to be the story. That's the only way you get it sometimes.

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

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

I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.

For me, the easiest thing to figure out is the story I want to tell, and the hardest thing is to figure out the voice that's gonna tell it. And that's why I finish very little.

I do better just letting the stories develop. I don't outline very well, and I can't follow it if I do. Once I've outlined it, why write the damn book?

So we [with Kate DiCamillo] decided to give the friends an object and see what they did with it. The object was a sock and it went from there. Once we got going, once we got on a roll, it became very easy to work together and to figure out how to do it. We would meet for two-hour segments, usually from 10-12, two or three times a week. We met all one summer, and I think into the fall.

I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

I'm one of the narrative-push people. I don't outline, I don't plan ahead. So I'm my first reader, telling myself the story as I'm going along. Since I haven't designed it ahead of time, each day I have to be sure that the footing is solid before I make the next step. I think you could be more intricate if you work it out ahead of time.

Larger game teams are often a bit more experienced at working with writers, which is often a huge relief. However, it also means that there are more people wanting to wander around the narrative kitchen telling you how you should be making your story pies.

Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work.

It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't-I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It's in there somewhere-but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

I think that sharpens the intention of a scene and clarifies a story's arc. Of course, I don't seek the questions until after I've written a scene - or maybe after I've daydreamed it.

I never outline. I don't work from an outline. I have no idea where the book is going. I mean, even two-thirds of the way through, I don't know how it's going to end.

I so love the animation process. Interesting, everything that I do in animation, the kind of crafting and skills of storytelling, totally work within the structure of the Disney nature films. In a weird way, I like to think that animation is like painting, and Disney nature is like sculpting. Animation you start with a blank canvas and you paint. With Disney nature, you start with a big block of imagery and you hone it down into your final story. Somewhere you end up with something kind of pretty to watch.

Being blocked, being uncertain, sitting there not knowing, waiting, abiding with it: this is the work. If you don't have the tolerance for that you're in great trouble. If you want to call it a writer's block... that doesn't seem a very useful name for that kind of abiding that I think is the essence of the work.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

Even if you need, and want, a second opinion, it can be dangerous to have people telling you what they think you ought to add, or cut, before you've even finished telling your story. One loses heart; one loses energy and interest. Or at least I do.

When I sit down to write a novel I do not at all know, and I do not very much care, how it is to end.

I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block. When I find myself frozen-whether I'm working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire book-it's usually because I'm trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place.

I don't get writer's block. I don't try to write anything; when something comes, I write it. I just practice and when I get an idea I write it down.