Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

Just write what comes to you.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.

When you're writing, you're putting thought into what you want to express, and then you come up with it - it comes to you. When you're improvising, it's the same thing. You're writing. You just say it out loud right then, instead of saying, 'You think this might work?'

For me, you have to not have a formula. You have to not even sit down and say, 'I want to write right now.' It has to just kind of come out. It's not something you can plan.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

I think people who create and write, it actually does flow-just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down. It's simple.

When I write, I put one foot in front of the other. It's an act of faith. I just follow my heart.

When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads.

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

One writes not by will but by surrender.

I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts.

I've learned never to try and force words to come.

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

I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.

Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

I have 40 years of unpublished material, the ones they don't pick, and the reason I don't redraw them or use them again is that I like to use my brain every day and come up with new jokes.

When I do write, it happens really easily. I'll just kind of sing along to whatever I'm playing, then find a line to build off of, then sit down and write. When I do write, I take care of business!

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten hours a week writing. The writing is going on all the time in my head; the trick is to capture it. Showers are great. Traffic jams are great.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.