Kevin Kwan Quotes

I don't write with a scheme or a plan. I write word to word, so whatever that first sentence is, having said that, one more or less had to say what comes next and next and next. Guilty of no cogitation or forethought.

My writing process isn't a very organized thing.

I'm not the sort of writer who can plan out things. Mostly I have no idea where I'm going.

I don't plot the books out ahead of time, I don't plan them. I don't begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don't work with an outline and I don't work in a straight line.

I just write what comes along. I don't have a detailed master plan.

I realized I had a novel on my hands, but didn't know where it was going to go. So I thought, 'I'm going to do everything that you're not supposed to do when you plan a novel; I'm going to step back and let this thing take itself wherever it wants to go, and I'm not going to worry about how things connect until later on.'

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.

My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.

Writing can't be too calculated. My best writing is when I set it aside, move on. It's not when I'm crafting a sentence, thinking about what word should follow another.

One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.

I don't set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it's about.

I start writing with only the vaguest idea about who my characters are and what is going to happen, and the characters and plot come into existence as I go. I've tried doing it the other way, but for me, outlining is a waste of time because I never follow the outline.

I start writing with an open mind without thinking about genre and realise, only after writing, that it falls under many genres.

The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it’s beautiful. I’ve had a sign by my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, ‘DON’T THINK!’

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.

When I sit down to write, I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.

I didn't have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

The important discovery I made very early is that my novels had to be written without any given plan or outline. I can't do it in any other way. But then they are dependent on the sentences, my intuition, and, as I have experienced many times, the subconscious.

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.

I am not a consecutive writer.

We don't know what we're writing until it just comes out. We don't sit around crunching numbers.

When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

When I sat down and wrote the first paragraph, I was like, 'Oh, I can go with this.' I didn't do an outline. I didn't do anything. I just wrote sentence by sentence, not knowing where the story was going.

In writing, I'm totally anti-plans of any kind. All my attempts to plan and plot novels have come to grief, and in expensive ways.

I've always thought of myself as an organic writer, rather than a cerebral one. I feel my way along as I go, hoping I'll get to the place I intend to reach.