John Burnside Quotes

The first thing I tried to write was a novel, when I took that time off in grad school. Then I didn't finish it. I went back to school, and then I started writing nonfiction kind of by accident.

I wrote 'Ava Wrestles the Alligator' when I was 22 or 23. These people and that world have been evolving in me for a while. It's such a shift not to be in that world.

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing. I did that with 'World's Fair,' as with all of them. The inventions of the book come as discoveries.

I was writing notes, but not composing poems. The Hunter began to develop out of this fragmented process.

I have a vast 'bone pile' of stillborn or abandoned poems along with jottings and wisps from the great beyond that I tend to scan. Sometimes that leads somewhere, and sometimes the Muse is just on sabbatical.

I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going.

I've written a lot of books now; I've been published for over 30 years. I hope with every book I learn something new, and with every new novel I try to improve the process of writing.

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

We have to learn not to feel guilty about letting our imagination browse around, and you know, in writing fiction particularly. But I think, in any kind of writing, we have to learn to allow ourselves to approach it in a contemplative way.

When a story or part of a story comes to me, I turn it over in my mind a long time before starting to write. I might make notes or take long drives or who knows what. By the time I give myself permission to write, I know certain things, though not everything. I know where the story is headed, and I know certain crucial points along the way.

I spend a lot of time in a sort of free state when I'm writing in the beginning and sketching.

When I'm writing a book, I prefer not to speak about it, because only when the book is finished can I try to understand what I've really done and to compare my intentions with the result.

When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book.

If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.

I learn from every movie I do because on every movie I have a different experience.

The idea led me into the research, which continues to give me more ideas for the story.

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.

'Presumed Innocent' was written over a six to seven year period with intervals in between where I was figuring out the end of the book and writing other stuff... My life as a writer was carried on against the odds. I had written four unpublished novels by then... as a writer of fiction, I hadn't gotten very far. I just wanted to do it.

I feel like you just need to keep writing until the writing itself just begins to take shape.

Were there stories I wrote along the way that were terrible clinkers? God, yes. But they were all a product of their time, and I did the best I could.

Regardless of any experiences in the past, for me it really is important to be engrossed in as much of the creative process as I possibly can. I was surprised with how much the eight years I spent on 'Castle' actually serviced that. I ended up, in a way, having a free education on that show.

Any journey of a creative person has, you know, really unusual challenges and years where you don't work and years where you work.

The stuff that I learned on 'Sons,' the education of how to tell stories, was part of that mythology. It's hard to look at it and go, 'Oh, if I knew this, I would have done it this way,' because the fact is I like to think that all that sort of unraveled as it was supposed to.