Jeff Lindsay Quotes

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.

No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say.

I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing.

My stories are never quite good enough.

Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again.

I fear becoming formulaic. Some of my books are.

To write fiction is to think that you're doing it wrong - that your work habits are inhibiting you; that you've chosen the wrong subject; that you've chosen the right subject, but that someone else has, unbeknownst to you, already written exactly the book you're laboring over.

I used to get worried about writing a love song, because everyone else is doing them, and there are already enough of them out there. But I came to realize that there's a reason for that: Love is powerful, one of the most powerful emotions there is.

There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.

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.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

In college, I had a lot of friends who were writers and wanted to be writers and I felt intimidated by it. I just didn't know if I had any gift or voice and I had no confidence about it.

I find I can write for two lines, and then I have nothing else to say. For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there's something more to say.

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.

I'm a little harsh. When people say, 'I have writers block. What do you suggest?' I say, 'If you can't write, don't write. No one needs your writing. Don't torture yourself.'

I've been trying to write a book since before I was old enough to vote, and I've collected many rejection slips from publishers and magazines. I used to keep them all stuck to my refrigerator, with magnets, but an ex-girlfriend told me they were depressing, and defeatist, and suggested I take them down. A very wise suggestion on her part.

I think I'm alright as a lyricist, you know? But then what will happen every couple of months or so is that I'll hear a song I've never heard before and feel I've gone right back to square one.

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.

An original something, dear maid, you would wish me to write; but how shall I begin? For I'm sure I have not original in me, Excepting Original Sin.

When you're a writer, you hear your internal critic, and that's really hard to get over. And then sometimes you hear critiques from classmates and stuff. But when a book comes out, it's just hundreds of opinions and you have to learn to separate out the ones you want to listen to or figure out many you want to listen to.

If I think about the writers I love or might be influenced by, I can't write at all, so I pretend there aren't any.

I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by the time I see that it's a poem, it's almost written in my head somewhere.

My verses stand gawping a bit. I never get used to this. They've lived here long enough.

There can be nothing more humiliating for a writer of fiction to have to do than restate a case that has already been made.

I express things through characters because I have a fear that my own voice is irritating because that's been said to me.