John Niven Quotes

I find the most difficult part of writing is to get it down initially because what you have written is usually so terrible that it's disheartening; you don't want to go on. That's what I think is hard - the discouragement that comes from seeing what you have done.

I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing.

I wrote lots of pages. I showed what I wrote to Iowa friends, and they said, 'Good start.' That was discouraging because I thought it was almost done.

If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut short after the first few leaden sentences.

I write slowly. I actually write quickly, but I throw out so much material.

When it comes to lyrics, I just write down a lot of things, and only a very tiny fraction of it, I think, is any good.

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.

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest.

I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection.

My stories are never quite good enough.

The whole excitement for writing anything is quite intense. And for a day or two, you think you've done everything extremely well. The problems start on the third day, and continues for the rest of your life.

I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.

The longer I carry on, the more difficult writing seems to get.

My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs - because, full disclosure, I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, 'Don't write that,' or, 'Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats.'

In a first draft, I concentrate on moving forward and trying not to panic.

Every word I write I suspect the next day.

A lot of times, I write and have to scrap it. You don't know what I'm talking about because the words are too much, and it's overwhelming.

I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won't come, that nothing will happen.

I've never written a novel before, and part of the reason I haven't is I was worried about getting 50,000 words into a book and realizing I'd made a mistake on word three that would mean throwing everything out.

The first line of the song is always the hardest thing to write. And then after that, the song should - unless it sucks - it should write itself.

I'm not a writer who refuses to talk about a book until I've finished.

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

You just have to sit down and write the next book. I mean, it's not all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book.