Victoria Wood Quotes

Unless I'm really uneasy with what I'm writing, I lose interest very quickly.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

It takes a lot of adrenaline and fear to make me actually write.

I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.

It's tough to know what I'm going to write about. I never really know until it starts happening.

Sometimes you don't really know what you're going to write about. I mean, there's times where you get into a writing room and it's a complete flop. And then there's times where you get to a writing room and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just on a roll.'

Until a book starts forming in your head, you always wonder, 'Am I going to be able to do this again?'

I don't even subscribe to writer's block being a truthful thing. I've had writer's laziness quite often. But I think it's all about sitting down and facing down the blank page and doing it, and I've always been ok at that.

You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that.

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the act of writing. I don't talk about the anguish I suffer in creating. I do not have a fear of the blank page, writer's block, all those things that we hear about writers.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

There aren't a lot of 'Aha!' moments in writing.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

Many writers are afraid of writing something bad, so they don't try or give up when their efforts don't lead to a masterpiece right away. If you work at it, you will improve.

I have no literary fears.

I work via the high-tension-wire method, which is maybe going for long periods without writing while the tension builds up - when am I going to write this, am I going to be able to write this, what is this image about - and I'm thinking about it all the time, but I'm not really inside it, inside the writing.

One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word.

I find writing really difficult - definitely the most difficult of all the things I do.

One of my fears is not writing. I don't know how to do anything else.

With writing, I love doing it, but there's that love-hate relationship: You're not having a good run, you've hit a wall; it's frustrating.

I have a huge respect for writers and realise that this is not an area that I find easy. I doubt that I would have the patience in front of a blank sheet of paper to become a writer.

The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: 'Just do it; get something, anything, on to the screen or page, just establish a flow of words, and criticise them later.' You give this advice but can't always take it.