Greg Graffin Quotes

When I'm working on one book, part of my imagination is thinking ahead to the next one.

I definitely want to write some fiction, for sure. I already have half of the next book. I already have it all mapped out. I'm ready. I'm ready to bring it to the world.

My novels aren't really generated by a single conceptual spark; it's more a process of many different elements that come together unexpectedly over a long period of time.

You have to learn how to write each book.

I love all the characters I write.

When I type a title page, I hold it and I look at it and I think, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I’ll have a book.

The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

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.

A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.

The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

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.'

I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.

I personally am a 'discovery writer,' as we're termed, someone who plans the book by writing it and then revising the entire thing. When it comes to saga, this means writing large chunks of prose before any of it coalesces into a book.

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.

So in the first draft, I'm inventing people and place with a broad schematic idea of what's going to happen. In the process, of course, I discover all sorts of bigger and more substantial things.

I write short stories. I write every day.

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

I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.

I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.

I started writing stories in my spare time.

I enjoy the writing process and producing; I enjoy seeing an idea come to fruition. I'm driven by very complex characters. You look at the pilot of 'Breaking Bad,' where there's so much depth to the character, you can't help but be invested when you watch.

It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.

Here's the secret to finishing that first book. Don't rewrite as you go.