Ben E. King Quotes

The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

Kids think you just sit down and start writing. I always tell them you never do that.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

Writing is hard. I mean, I sit there and work at it.

The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.

I write down portions, maybe fragments, and perhaps an imperfect view of what I'm hoping to write. Out of that, I keep trying to find exactly what I want.

I like to have a title before I start writing.

I love the structural part of the writing process.

Outlining is like putting on training wheels. It gives me the courage to write, but we always go off the outline.

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

On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

Well I don't write, I attempt to scribble here and there. And no, nothing ever so grand as being published.

I do the same kind of rewriting that I do in the shorts that I do in long books - and that is a lot. The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B' the summer after I turned 21.

To make anything successful, you need a good writer.

When you are a writer, the assist-to-turnover ratio... there are a lot more turnovers than assists.

I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it. You may be ashamed of it later, but that's another story.

I spend about a year between novels.

I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.

The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part.

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read.

Basically I started to jot notes, lots of faxes back and forth to my writer, we faxed ideas throughout the whole first draft, and started all over again.

Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it.