Barry Schwartz Quotes

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

What I have to write, the story, it is always going on in my mind. What incidences I can add in the story - it is a continuous process.

If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

If one day a TV series comes into my head, and that is what I want to write, I'll write it. It just depends what story is in my brain at the time.

Plot is not my forte. It's like I have to live in my head in the book for a while before I figure out what the story is... My process is a bit messier.

Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

I tend to start with a kernel, a vague concept, and just begin to write things down - notes about a character, lines of dialogue, descriptive passages about a place. One idea fires another. I do that for about a year. By then there's a story, and I'll go on to a complete first draft that sews many of those ragtag pieces together.

My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.

I find getting the first draft down to be the biggest challenge. Every word, every punctuation mark, every plot point is a decision. It's much more fun to play with something that already exists.

No ideas are harmed in the making of my books, by the way. All I do with my best ideas is run with them, fast as I can, taking notes and occasionally suggesting a left hand turn rather than the right hand one which might have taken us both over a precipice.

I keep my options open about my next story, there will always be those vague discussions at home.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

Basically I started to jot notes, lots of faxes back and forth to my writer, we faxed ideas throughout the whole first draft, and started all over again.

I don't stare at a sheet of paper and try to think of a good word to use. I try to see where the story should go.

My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.

I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.

Writing is a process of discovering. I could never outline a narrative; that just sounds boring. There's no joy of discovery in what you're doing if that's your strategy.

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

When I start writing a novel, I have no sense of direction, no idea, really nothing.

I like to jot down ideas on the back of envelopes and to recognise the potential value in small things. I also like the freedom to think without feeling compelled to write too early. Stories are often better if we can hold back and get to know the characters and the sounds of language.

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.