Dee Rees Quotes

I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.

I've always kind of wrote when I wanted to. Once I get the idea in my head and get it outlined out, I usually just sit and write until it's done.

I don't write on demand - I wait for inspiration to come.

I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten hours a week writing. The writing is going on all the time in my head; the trick is to capture it. Showers are great. Traffic jams are great.

Don't force yourself to write. Some people can write a novel in a few months, whereas for others it can take over a year. I'm lucky to be one of the former - but, even so, if I'm not in the mood to write, I won't. I'll go off, do something else and come back to it when I'm ready.

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.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

Writing is a funny thing. It's not like you're working on a schedule. It comes in fits and starts.

I've been known to write 10 pages a day for 10 days running before I take a breath. I am not a disciplined writer. I'm one of those people who laughingly call themselves inspirational writers, which basically means someone who has no control over their own creative process.

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

I like all kinds of stories, and I usually work on several stories at once. When I run out of gas on one, I start work on the other.

I write all the time, even if it means recording in the hotel room. I write on the plane, anywhere, anytime I'm inspired or have ideas.

I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.

I find I can write for two lines, and then I have nothing else to say. For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there's something more to say.

I write anywhere - when I have an idea, it's hard not to write. I used to be kind of precious about where I wrote. Everything had to be quiet and I couldn't be disturbed; it really filled my day.

I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.

I don't believe in writer's block or waiting for inspiration. If you're a writer, you sit down and write.

Some weeks there's no writing, and some weeks are full of writing.

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 was an early-morning or late-night writer. Early morning was my favorite; late night was because you had a deadline. And at four in the morning, you make up some of your most absurd jokes.

I might see something on TV and get inspired to write about it. I can't sit down and plan to write. It has to come to me in my head like someone telling me the words.