Michelle Dean Quotes

Before Arthur, I'd dismissed altogether writing fiction. You only have so many semi-sharp arrows in your quiver, I'd told myself, and I was not going to be able to write a novel.

I think one of the keys to better writing is releasing all of your ideas and to not be afraid. Dream big. This could be the greatest novel in the world you know.

I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't.

I always have a rough outline, but I'm shocked at how little I actually follow it. Those characters keep doing things that I never expected. I think if I crept up to my keyboard and peeked, they'd be talking about things behind my back. Okay, that's a little paranoid and delusional... but just a little.

There's nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, 'Well, okay, I'm going to do something of high artistic worth.'

I prefer writing originals.

I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it's true. We aren't satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.

The fun one can have writing books about books is limitless, to be honest.

The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is 'write what you know,' and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, 'You can write about anything you can imagine.'

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.

I write 'by the seat of my pants.' I love to do research. I am inspired by contemporary writers and contemporary events. I live in the real world.

I wanted to become a writer. I enjoyed reading as a child.

I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find the time to write it.

Struggling writers are often advised to pick a simple genre, but it doesn't work that way.

I quickly realised that it is difficult to get started when writing a novel. You have this dream of what you want to create, but it is like walking around a swimming pool and hesitating to jump in because the water is too cold.

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

The good thing about writing a novel is that you're creating an imaginary world and can take a break when you need to.

The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.

A creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they have in common - the desire to write - could almost be considered meaningless.

Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen.

My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.