Gertrude Stein Quotes

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market - you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won't get over the right stile.

Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.

I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only apprenticeship we have, it's the only way of learning how to write a story.

The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.

I can certainly be surprised by turns a story takes, but usually not once I'm actually in the writing/drawing stage. In the plotting stage, anything can happen. That's why I try to finish that part before I start writing. I may be exaggerating here - I'm sure there are times when I think of something part-way through that changes the story, but the ultimate outcome doesn't change. Or not yet. It could always happen.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

I'm still getting to the good part / the breaking down / learning how to write my story.

I've never invested myself properly in trying to write stories. When I write lyrics, mostly I write each sentence separately on an index card and then I lay them out and I just mix them up.

Directing is such a crucial part of the writing process; you start directing and you see what does not work. "Oh, God, what was I thinking?" and then you can rearrange it.

I don't really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it's very upsetting. But it's inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one's life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all.

The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then try to discover what you have done.

I think writing and reading are completely synergistic; not necessarily in that one has to be a good reader to be a good writer or vice versa, but that they so inform each other.

The sensibility I brought to directing was similar to what I bring when I write.

In my own work, when I start off writing a scene, I don't know which physical details are going to turn out to be meaningful. But, inevitably, certain images will stand out - you start to decide which ones are important as you go.

I love all the characters I write.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

I have always been immersed in a world filled with words, earlier as a reader and now, finally, as both a reader and a writer.

To me, writing is a very physical process. I lay out the entire book with the two narratives side by side on my bedroom floor, and just get down on my hands and knees and start looking at it in that physical space. "Does this really follow from this? Should this be here or elsewhere?" I will literally cut the paper into paragraphs. I'll cut it into segments and move the segments around from one narrative to the other until I feel that I've found the natural structure.

When I write, I never think of segments as chapters; I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.

The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.

I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

With non-fiction writing I feel like I'm confined and driven by what actually happened. That makes the "plot". So it's a process of getting all of my notes typed up, then scanning through the notes, trying to extract or find certain vignettes that seem like they might write well - that might have a potential for good energy, shape, etc. And then at some point I start stringing these together, keeping an eye on the word count.

It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned - when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse.