Alexandra Kleeman Quotes

I believe in working with your morning brain - you have your coffee, and then maybe you'll start thinking about the grand plan and what's going to happen in the next arc, and then you write for a while, and then you get really dreamy, and over the course of the day or in the middle of the night, something comes, and you just throw it in!

I don't start writing a script until I can see it all in my head, then it's a matter of getting it down in white heat.

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.

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

Knowing what you're up against is part of the strength of writing something that is even, I guess, considered halfway original, knowing what's out there to begin with.

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.

A lot of writing is thinking.

When I write for 'n+1,' I begin by doing a lot of reading, to try to convince myself I'm not stupid. Then I scribble down a paragraph here, a paragraph there, when a notion strikes. Then I see if I can arrange those notions in a way that yields an argument.

When I write, my brain moves faster than my hands so I'm always trying to picture things.

I find a lot of writing happens when you're not actually at the computer. So I carry a notebook.

I've noticed it a lot. I'm not someone who revises. It's always the first movement, it's that. It's an instinct. Either it works straight away, or it won't ever work.

Out of all of the things I've written, 'Dot' was the quickest from first thoughts to full production.

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?'

It's not an easy job to think creatively and then also have to think logistically.

I'm not calculating enough in the way I approach writing.

It's tough to know what I'm going to write about. I never really know until it starts happening.

Part of the job involves thinking about things and eliminating them. You spend a lot of time coming up with ideas that are terrible and hating them and hating yourself.

Writing is sort of like chess for me. You have to think carefully before you move, thinking, planning.

For me, between "Reference" and "Sketching & Conceptualizing" is the "Get the Hell Out of the Studio" step. I most often NEED to shut off the computer, push myself back from my desk and escape the studio space to let possible ideas percolate in my gray matter before committing anything to paper or digital imagery as a sketch or a concept.

I have a shoebox: for ideas, fragments, snatches of conversation I hear. I scrawl it down, throw the scraps in the box. Every time I start a new script I start picking through the pieces. Suddenly you get five pieces together and think: this is almost the first Act of a movie, if I flesh it out a bit.

I gotta pound the keys for the ideas to flow.

Hands down, the hardest part for me is coming up with an idea. I spend about 14 months writing a book, and that's a lot of hours spent thinking about a single project. I simply have to love the idea. I'll go through dozens of workable ideas until I find the one that lights my fire.

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write.

I think that there are a lot of great studio people but the fewer voices in my head when I'm getting out a draft, the better. I just get it out and then I'll listen to all manner of good ideas. And that's what happens, too, when I'm touring and doing a character on stage.