Padgett Powell Quotes

I really don't keep an outline; I don't organize in any way. I just write.

My writing process isn't a very organized thing.

I just write what comes along. I don't have a detailed master plan.

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.

My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.

I write totally spontaneously. I actually write fiction by hand - that always seems to startle people. I think the reason I do that is to bypass the thinking part of me and get to the more unconscious part, which is where all the good ideas seem to be.

Writing can't be too calculated. My best writing is when I set it aside, move on. It's not when I'm crafting a sentence, thinking about what word should follow another.

I don't plot the books out ahead of time, I don't plan them. I don't begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don't work with an outline and I don't work in a straight line.

I'm definitely a seat-of-the-pants writer.

I start writing with only the vaguest idea about who my characters are and what is going to happen, and the characters and plot come into existence as I go. I've tried doing it the other way, but for me, outlining is a waste of time because I never follow the outline.

I'm often just writing just to write. I'm not writing with...If I write, like, sitting down with a goal in mind, it's always, like, the worst. It turns into a ska song even if I'm trying to write like a horror movie sound track or something.

The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it’s beautiful. I’ve had a sign by my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, ‘DON’T THINK!’

I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from.

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.

I've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.'

I'm not the sort of writer who can plan out things. Mostly I have no idea where I'm going.

I am not a consecutive writer.

One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.

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

When I sat down and wrote the first paragraph, I was like, 'Oh, I can go with this.' I didn't do an outline. I didn't do anything. I just wrote sentence by sentence, not knowing where the story was going.

In writing, I'm totally anti-plans of any kind. All my attempts to plan and plot novels have come to grief, and in expensive ways.

I might see something on TV and get inspired to write about it. I can't sit down and plan to write. It has to come to me in my head like someone telling me the words.

I don't plan the books ahead of time. It's not like Harry Potter. I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline.

I am very spontaneous when I write; it kind of just comes out. I never think about what I'm going to write about first... it just sort of comes out like word vomit.

I basically just write stream of consciousness to a certain extent. I let the song kind of go where it wants to go.