Jenny Offill Quotes

I personally am a 'discovery writer,' as we're termed, someone who plans the book by writing it and then revising the entire thing. When it comes to saga, this means writing large chunks of prose before any of it coalesces into a book.

For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book.

Writing a novel was completely awesome because parts of it could suck and I could throw them away. I didn't have to know the ending until I got there.

The beginning of a book is always the hardest part for me. I'm a Chapter 3 kind of writer, which means I naturally start at Chapter 3.

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.

Oh how I wish I could be as obsessive as Carrie from 'Homeland' when I'm writing a book! That would save me a lot of trouble during the revision process.

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.

Every book is like starting over again. I've written books every way possible - from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work.

I would fix other people's lines if they asked me on occasion. The hard part of writing is the architecture of it, getting the story and structuring it. Not the tweaking of lines.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

Whichever character I'm using and wherever I am in my mind dictates what kind of story I'm going to tell.

I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.

Often, writer's block will occur when I don't understand a character or his/her motivations. So I will make notes analysing characters.

I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.

Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how to write and what to write and what not to write.

I think I wrote 'The Trysting Place' in about three weeks. But it was inexperience that made me have to do that. I didn't feel good about the book all the time I was writing it. It felt a bit like wading through molasses.

With a novel, no matter where I am in it, I'm fretting about it. Every time I write a book, it starts with great forward momentum. Then there seems to be a period where it slows down a bit, and other things intervene. Then I gain momentum.

It is a wonderful thing in the process of writing when such paper characters are first sketched, and, when one is doing good work, from a certain point in time they come alive and start contradicting the author as well.

I have a manuscript that I'm almost done with, but I've been saying that forever. I'm on what I think will be the second-to-last chapter. It's a story about chance and coincidence.

The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.

I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me.

It's all about letting the story take over.

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