Antony Johnston Quotes

I like to take writing retreats within a day's drive of home. Less travel time means more time for writing, which is the name of the game here.

I don't need music to write, but sometimes I put music on. I don't need special clothes or even my own equipment.

I plan less and less. It's a great benefit of writing lots, that you get good at holding long narratives in your head like a virtual space.

Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it's going.

I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating.

When I do write, it happens really easily. I'll just kind of sing along to whatever I'm playing, then find a line to build off of, then sit down and write. When I do write, I take care of business!

So: we're all tired. Now what? Manuscripts written in Club Med?

I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.'

The process of writing has always started for me when I put myself in a place where no one distracts me.

Sometimes I write with music on, and if I'm in a good flow, I don't even hear it.

Three hundred words in a day is not a lot. So much of it is thinking before writing. And then there's the cutting. But you do what you do and keep moving forward.

I write anywhere - when I have an idea, it's hard not to write. I used to be kind of precious about where I wrote. Everything had to be quiet and I couldn't be disturbed; it really filled my day.

I think it's always an adjustment for me, but I do feel like, ultimately, I can kind of write anywhere. It just takes a second to get back in to the groove.

I write in all sorts of places; it's a legacy of my time as a journalist, where I could turn out copy in a hotel corridor. But I have a little office that I rent in my local town, and that's my ideal place.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day's work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

I am a big outliner. For my adult book, 'The Visibles,' I did not outline, and it took me two years to write because I just didn't outline, and I had no path.

I like to write at home a lot.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

I like to go out and write. So I'll often go to a Starbucks or a local coffee bar, and I'll sit there and I'll write. I can write pretty much anywhere.

But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer, the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever.

An incinerator is a writer's best friend.

Out of all of the things I've written, 'Dot' was the quickest from first thoughts to full production.

I love to stay at home and write.

I don't really get into a writing routine until March or April, when I'll write a few hundred words a day, often in a cafe in the morning after the school run.

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.