Gavin Bryars Quotes

But I do have an idea in my head before I go in about what I'm going to do.

When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.

BBC TV gets hold of an idea and beats it to death until we're all heartily sick of it. They buy people without thinking what they're going to do with them. It's the wrong way around. What they should be doing is employing really good ideas people to come up with good ideas.

I'm usually the one who creates most of my work. I have a lot of different ideas that I want to do, so I'm always like, 'Get on it, girl.'

Mostly, isolation allows me to go through a period where I really concentrate and get in a flow. Sometimes the whole process can be daunting, and when you're away from it, thinking about going back to it is especially daunting. If I go away for a week, I can be working on 10 songs at once, just jumping around to each one. I can get a month's worth of work done.

Creators start at the end. First they have an idea of what they want to create. Sometimes this is idea is general, and sometimes it is specific. Before you can create what you want you want to create, you must know what you are after, what you want to bring into being.

In every writer there is a certain amount of the scavenger.

In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitudes.

Important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning.

Typically there are little fragments of specific words and images swimming around in my mind, and then at some point, I'll sit down with the guitar and everything will fall into place. It's like your brain is a drain with a bunch of words and images dropping into it, swirling around. The drain is stopped up, but you can feel these things dropping into it. Then at some point, someone comes along and pulls the plug out of the drain and everything comes together in the song.

If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

A lot of people plan for failure, but they don't plan for success, and that's a big problem, especially in the TV world 'cause you're trying to find out what your show is.

If it's possible, I will have some noodles in the morning and start talking to people, start to think about a few things in my head - the project or a few ideas which are not finished or if there are possible directions and what will lead into another game. It's always like setting up some kind of game you can continuously play.

There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.

I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.

When you write a novel or paint a picture, you have the opportunity to approach it and back off, tear up pages, write, rewrite, paint over, and come back to it. In film, once you start shooting, you can't restart the clock, and you keep moving forward, and you don't look back, and you don't go back. And that is, of course, antithetical to the creative process. It's really hard to generate a comfortable creative flow under that kind of pressure.

I like to have an active set and a fun set. I keep my days to a decent hour; I don't go overtime. Do I beat people up? I beat people up in that they know I like to shoot fast. And they know I like to be efficient. And that I like to leapfrog.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and is it is cool and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit again.

When the idea comes, I often can't remember where it came from. I remember very little about writing the first series of Hitchhiker's. It's almost as if someone else wrote it.

Creativity is a process more often than it is an event.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.

Sometimes I start with a great title or idea, sometimes a great melody will run through my mind; but the higher percentage of the time, the words and music pretty much come at the same time.

I don't get writer's block. I don't try to write anything; when something comes, I write it. I just practice and when I get an idea I write it down.

The magic happens in the creative studios. But sometimes you're inspired when you're removed from it a little bit. That's when the juice starts to percolate.

I think every writer's had the experience of having a really good idea, waiting to write it, and then once you write it, you're like, "Oh I kind of got past the sell by date on this." I'm not connected to the initial spark that was the idea. A lot of that's about staying open.