Ari Graynor Quotes

I carry around, like, a little journal with me and just write all the time. Not necessarily, like, actually sitting down and writing lyrics - just freeform writing, whatever's going on in my mind. I write a lot on airplanes, actually, because it's completely isolating.

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

Catch me on a good day, I think half of my books aren't too bad. Catch me on a bad day, I think I've never written a good line.

Every time I write a book, I think how I could be doing it better to please people - a nicer book with nicer characters - but I just can't.

I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.

I carry a small spiral notebook with me at all times and have been doing this for many years. There's a shoe box in my closet filled with these notebooks, each riddled with notes and impressions, ideas, schemes, and soup recipes.

My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs - because, full disclosure, I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, 'Don't write that,' or, 'Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats.'

I keep a composition book with me at all times to write rhymes, to write down ideas, write down my thoughts, you know just so I don't forget any ideas.

I just kind of talk about what's happening in my life and it's kind of like a therapy session. Usually something good comes out of that. Or sometimes other writers will come to me with ideas and then I'll put my own spin on it. It's usually really collaborative and open and it's very therapeutic for me as well.

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

Just start writing and you'll find what you want to say.

Sometimes a line enters your head, and you're so grateful for it. You go online to check to see if anyone wrote it before you. You must have stolen it.

I have to write because if I don't get something down then after a while I feel it's going to bang the side of my head off.

I have these huge black foam boards on the wall, and tacked to them, I have these white punch cards with my story ideas, scenes and notes.

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.

When I lead essay workshops, I ask students to come up with at least five topics, which they'll narrow down to one. The winning idea should be the story the student is most excited to tell because it honestly reflects his or her best self.

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

Don't get it right, just get it written.

If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

I act as a sponge. I soak it up and squeeze it out in ink every two weeks.

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.

Despite all of our technological advances, content creation still requires time, inspiration, and a certain amount of sweat. There aren't any shortcuts. You can't write an algorithm for it. You can't predict it. You can't code it.

Titles either come to you at the beginning or they don't come to you at all, I find, and I hate the feeling that I haven't got a title because it usually means that you are left at the end scrambling around trying to find something.

It's kind of a mysterious process, but something will catch my attention, and I'll make a note about it. I may even write a few pages about it, and then I'll put it aside, but I'll sort of keep it in mind. Then as time goes on, other things will gather to it as if it's a magnet, almost, and eventually, there's enough to make the story.