John Ortberg Quotes

The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.

I love the structural part of the writing process.

The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part.

I like to have a title before I start writing.

Kids think you just sit down and start writing. I always tell them you never do that.

Even if you plan your book, the actual writing is unplanned.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book.

The writing process for me is pretty much always the same - it's a solitary experience.

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

Writing is a craft and, like all craft, proceeds by stages: conception, material selection, rough shaping, detailed shaping, sanding and finishing.

I tend to edit some as I go - partly because one of the reasons I don't outline much is that I don't know what the next scene will be until I've actually written the previous scene.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

My writing process hasn't changed - it's is the same whether I'm working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper - and get to work.

I write everything out in longhand in one fast go. And then I throw out the first few and start over again. By the end of the first draft, the whole thing's messy and disgusting and horrible, but you really understand the foundational stuff.

I try to write an essay every time I speak.

I like to write from scratch most of the time, but I like to have a backup plan just in case.

I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read.

Basically I started to jot notes, lots of faxes back and forth to my writer, we faxed ideas throughout the whole first draft, and started all over again.

The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.

I love the writing. I love the idea of typing and seeing it on the computer and printing it out myself and, you know, moving sentences around. I like that.

Writing takes a lot of patience. It usually takes me a year to write a book. One time, it took me 14 years to write a book, not that I worked on it every day.

Writing is hard. I mean, I sit there and work at it.

I write 1,000-1,500 words. The next day, I rewrite it and add 1,000-1,500 words to the end of it.