Jamaica Kincaid Quotes

When I write notes in my journal, I'm just trying to scribble down as much as possible. Later on, I decide whether to follow some of those first impressions or whether to abandon them.

I write my books in my head, and not in a specific study with a view. The view is from my inner eyes.

I actually feel that the different kinds of stories come out of different parts of my brain.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

I usually write things in my head before I ever write them down. When I write it out, usually I've already figured out what it is I'm trying to do.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

Writing is essentially an internal process.

My writing process is consecutive, like, 'mad scientist' crazy. It's not totally writing something that rhymes or even writing a rap necessarily. Sometimes it's just writing down stuff that I'm going through.

I always write a thing first and think about it afterward, which is not a bad procedure because the easiest way to have consequential thoughts is to start putting them down.

I don't know what I think until I write it down.

I find a lot of writing happens when you're not actually at the computer. So I carry a notebook.

Even if you plan your book, the actual writing is unplanned.

Every day I fantasise about situations and little themes I see in front of me that would make a good beginning of a story. But one has to be disciplined and just sit down and do it.

You have something that exists in your head, and getting that abstract thought from your head into something that actually exists is a difficult process.

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.

I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.

I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that is what I do, I feel them with the sympathetic neurons and I work out with my brain what it is that I am trying to write about, or I can't do it.

I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash.

I always write after I think for quite a long time, so the actual writing time is rather short. I think a lot of the work gets done when you have something on your mind while you're doing many other things.

I'm in a constant process of thinking about things.

I do a lot better if I sit around and think about a character for a couple of months.

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

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

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

I throw ideas out into the open when I really should just be writing them down in a journal.