Ned Beauman Quotes

I don't even subscribe to writer's block being a truthful thing. I've had writer's laziness quite often. But I think it's all about sitting down and facing down the blank page and doing it, and I've always been ok at that.

I often feel like not writing! Sometimes I overcome it by just sitting there until writing happens. Sometimes I don't write, because books often need periods of percolation.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

I work via the high-tension-wire method, which is maybe going for long periods without writing while the tension builds up - when am I going to write this, am I going to be able to write this, what is this image about - and I'm thinking about it all the time, but I'm not really inside it, inside the writing.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.

In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.

It's hard to tell if I've had writer's block because it seems to me that it's when nothing comes, but, you know, every day you stare at that computer screen, and I think, 'It's never going to happen today. How can I write three pages?' And the hours pass, and they haven't shown up, and then at the very end it always happens, so it's willpower.

I'm just very, very slow. I would not make it as a journalist, I've got to tell you. I sweat bullets over every sentence, and sometimes, you know, a day will pass and I've written one paragraph, and I've been at the computer for four hours.

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

If you feel the urge to write, just lie down and read a book: it will pass.

... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.

I'm a very spoiled writer. I need to be indolent, to waste a lot of paper. I'm inefficient.

I don't generally listen to music while working, but sometimes music can help me get past minor writer's block.

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.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.

It takes me forever to actually finish something like a ten-page essay. But, when I do, I usually love what they are. It's a complicated relationship.

It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

In the back of my mind was the constant hankering, almost yearning, to write but something always stopped me in my tracks. Or if I did find my way to put a pen to paper or finger on a keyboard I'd give up after a few minutes. I'd find other things to do: Anything but writing.

You know, sometimes I get moments of inspiration when I'm writing something and then the task seems so daunting that it just kind of scares me away.

My process is messy and non-linear, full of false starts, fidgets, and errands that I suddenly need to run now; it is a battle to get something - anything - down on paper. I doodle in sketchbooks: bits of ideas, fragments of sentences, character names, single lines of dialogue with no context.