Phil Foglio Quotes

'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

A story in your head isn't a story. It's just a daydream until you actually write it down. So write it down.

Usually, by the time I hit 'save' before taking a nap, my word count has gone down, but the world I'm creating feels more tangible than it did before.

While I was writing 'Elizabeth Is Missing' and struggling with the intricacies of the plot, I told myself the next book would be really simple and linear, and I'd have it all worked out before I set down a single word.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.

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.

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry.

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow.

I've never abandoned the novel.

As far as personal philosophies go, I think you should know your ending. I know that's radically different from a lot of other writers who just organically like to find the story. Other than that, I try different things and mess around. I'm still just playing a good bit.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

Certainly 'The Judgment of Paris' was the novel in which I found my own voice.

So in the first draft, I'm inventing people and place with a broad schematic idea of what's going to happen. In the process, of course, I discover all sorts of bigger and more substantial things.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

When I first began to have the initial idea for 'Heartsease,' I just wrote a skeleton story; that is, I started her off as this young, bright 16-year-old and then added the events that occurred and where she and other characters fitted in, even writing 3 different endings, as I was not sure where Mary's story would lead to.

At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration.

Storytelling is what lights my fire.

I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.

I never know how a novel is going to end, because you don't really know what's going to be at the bottom of a novel until you excavate it.

When you're a writer, you're always looking for conflict. It's conflict that drives great stories.

I never know what I'm going to write next. If I'm still writing the book but I'm very near the end, and I begin to think of what I'd like to do next, then I'll know that what I'm writing is in hand. I'll think of an ending and it will be fine.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

Often, writer's block will occur when I don't understand a character or his/her motivations. So I will make notes analysing characters.