Steve Erickson Quotes

I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.

When I sit down to write, I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.

The important discovery I made very early is that my novels had to be written without any given plan or outline. I can't do it in any other way. But then they are dependent on the sentences, my intuition, and, as I have experienced many times, the subconscious.

I cannot outline. I do not know what the next thing is going to happen in the book until it comes out of my fingers.

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

I've always thought of myself as an organic writer, rather than a cerebral one. I feel my way along as I go, hoping I'll get to the place I intend to reach.

I don't write with an outline. I don't often know what I'm going to do as I'm writing. And I do everything by feel and by instinct.

The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it’s beautiful. I’ve had a sign by my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, ‘DON’T THINK!’

Just start the sentence...and see what happens. This is how we write.

I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Search.' There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove.

I've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.'

The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along.

I'm not the sort of writer who can plan out things. Mostly I have no idea where I'm going.

I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit.

When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.

I'm definitely a seat-of-the-pants writer.

I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline. I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together.

When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads.

I don't set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it's about.

I don't outline. I sit down to write, and I take the ride. If something starts to not feel right, I go back to the last place that felt like jazz to me.

I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun.

You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting... It will come if it is there and if you will let it come.

For me, you have to not have a formula. You have to not even sit down and say, 'I want to write right now.' It has to just kind of come out. It's not something you can plan.

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.