Erin Morgenstern Quotes

When I'm writing something, I try not to get analytical about it as I'm doing it, as I'm writing it.

For me, you have to not have a formula. You have to not even sit down and say, 'I want to write right now.' It has to just kind of come out. It's not something you can plan.

Sometimes I think my writing sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

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.

I cannot outline. I do not know what the next thing is going to happen in the book until it comes out of my fingers.

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

I really just love to open a blank document and spew, whereas with a screenplay I have to be more judicious.

The way to compose for me is to have lots of time.

I think a lot of the dull parts of first drafts come from a kind of over-managing, intrusive writer who wants to direct traffic. The idea of taking out the parts that the reader could infer is very liberating, and it's weirdly part of radicalizing your work: it allows you to go to new places fast.

When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads.

It usually takes about a year to write each book. I don't plan it that way. I don't set deadlines. If a book wants to take longer, it can.

I love to do the stream-of-consciousness thing, because it's exciting for me, and I like to think it's exciting for the audience, too.

Writers who sit down and write might judge what they're putting down, but I always just try to barf it out. I'm writing crap, but I'll put it down.

I'm not a speed writer. I write slowly and revise obsessively. The end result tends to be good. That's where my strength is.

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

I tend to like order in almost every other aspect of my life, but for me, the process of writing is really chaotic and decadent and indulgent.

I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it's sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It's a very laborious process, but I love doing it.

You can just start writing, but you're gonna go off on 10 or 12 starts and weird tangents, and yeah you'll have those pages to use later - to gift wrap some fish for your mother - but either way you're gonna have pages.

You write your first draft with your heart and you re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think.

I write every day and I just love doing it. It's just... it's just a wonderful thing. Some of my stories work, some of them don't work. Some of them are wild and I love them, but they certainly don't fit into any kind of a normal system that I know about.

I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.

Once you get into the book, you've got to constantly find your - the rhythm of your prose. And it ends up being quite a musical experience either way.

The rhyme always knows better than you, and leads you to places where you wouldn't otherwise have gotten to and that is absolutely the case. Leading off from formal poetry, there is something about when you pay attention to form and you allow it to have its own laws and you listen to those laws you really do end up in places you wouldn't otherwise go. Which isn't to say that I believe in following the rules when I write. I don't. Each of the forms in my books feels to me new.

You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist.