John Searles Quotes

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.

Bad writing as a conscious goal is liberating for students: They are freed to be creative in a new and different way.

I can't imagine what it would be like to write in a relaxed state. I'm going to be writing some stories for my own interest. I want to experiment with different things and see if I can approach writing with much less control and in a better psychological state. It will be like breaking out of a straitjacket.

Basically, I just write whatever story grabs me rather than considering the genre.

I just write what I want to write.

I didn't have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

I just write books, and I do it without any notion of what I should do or shouldn't do.

My main piece of advice would be don't worry about being published - just write a really good book, but also don't be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and don't be afraid.

Don't let anyone tell you there's only one way to write.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

I loved writing the Spellman novels, but I never had any plan to only write in one genre.

I think writing gives me creative freedom.

You can be imaginative, you have the technology to convert your vision, you have the freedom to write the kind of stories you want to tell beyond the set formulas. Also, you have varied platforms to tell different kinds of stories.

I've always found the Write-What-You-Know axiom small and stifling.

I don't have anything to prove as a writer anymore. I write about Panera Bread or Red Lobster or Satan or Richard Ramirez or whatever comes to mind. I just write.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

As a writer, you have to first of all write what you want to. Listen to advice, by all means, but don't get bogged down in it.

When aspiring writers ask me about how they should target their writing, I tell them to pay no attention to that kind of thing. It will restrict you. You will end up falling into stereotypes in an effort to tailor your work toward a perceived genre category.

I mean, if you lined up 100 writers, you'd get 100 different ways in which they write. There's no right way or wrong way to do it; it's whatever your process is.

We have to learn not to feel guilty about letting our imagination browse around, and you know, in writing fiction particularly. But I think, in any kind of writing, we have to learn to allow ourselves to approach it in a contemplative way.

Professor Al Drake encouraged me to just write the way I talk. I decided if that's what I needed to do, I didn't need to be in school to do it.

I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.

You know how it is with writing. You just write what you want to write. There's no way to predict what is good or bad. You just do what you think is funny, and either it works or you're finished. It's impossible to predict anything.

The secret is to write just anything, to dare to write just anything, because when you write just anything, you begin to say what is important.