Omari Hardwick Quotes

My son had toyed with the idea of writing and trying to write a little bit, so that kind of gave me the bug to write also.

Most everything that happens to me in any significant sense finds its way into my fiction.

I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

I'm still surprised to be an author. I wonder what I'll write next?

Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably.

I get suggestions all the time. People feel quite free at events or even on the street to tell me what they think I should be writing. What I've learned, though, is that this thing, this connection, has to be in place for me to be able to kind of launch into a world imaginatively.

If you're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.

I get to do what I love every day. I get to crawl into someone else's head and I love that.

I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.

A writer is always, always searching, even against her will, against all her better instincts, for the thread of a story. Everything is fodder. Everything is fuel. You can feel it coming on like the tingling of a sore throat. The brain never stops struggling to reshape every experience and feeling into a coherent narrative.

True confession time: I never know where a book is going. I get a gut feeling the story is there, then pursue it with the enthusiasm of a hunting tiger on a trail. If I knew where I was going, I'd get bored out of my mind and stop writing.

Suddenly, the idea of writing a book was like coming home. I didn't tell anyone except my wife, Clare. I just began.

I never thought about writing a novel until I was 13, and that happened by chance. I was on school holidays, and I was bored, and I thought I just wanted to do something to occupy myself instead of asking, 'What can I do, mum? Entertain me.' I started, and it really just took over, and I realised, 'Wow, this is an amazing experience.'

When I wrote my first novel - I was nineteen - I did it very quickly. If you write fast, you feel like you're entering something not yet familiar - a world rather than thoughts about the world.

Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you're doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.

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.

Anything that feels like good characters, I am excited to do whether I write it or not. But if I don't find it in the world, I will write it myself.

I just used to make up stories for the kids at bedtime and my wife goes, 'you should start putting that stuff down.' It's such a joy to do.

For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

In 2011, I did an internship in Seven Dials, a junction in London where seven roads come together. I'd given up on writing after multiple rejections for my first novel, and I was starting to consider a career in publishing instead, but Seven Dials gave me such a strong idea for a setting that I couldn't resist picking up my pen again.

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