Janet Varney Quotes

There are fragments of me in all my characters.

There's some of me in all my characters.

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.

When I'm writing a story, which takes me a year or more, I can feel my character living with me - they're responding to whatever funny, familial, or social situation I'm in, and I think about their responses constantly.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

I don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

I spent some time, six months or so, ruminating about the characters before I sat down to write 'Faith'.

I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed. I don't think my style has changed very much at all - though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them, I think.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

You know how sometimes you hear a chord played on an organ and you can feel it vibrating in your bones? Sometimes when I'm writing, I can feel my bones vibrating because I'll have a thought or I'll have a character's voice in my head, and that's when I know I'm on the right track.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written.

That's the way it happens - some characters you set out to use, some are happy accidents. As long as it works, it doesn't really matter how you got them.

I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

There is always going to be a little bit of me in each character.

I have readers tell me that I must be bored, but that's not true. I am never bored with the characters. I like them.

What comes to me always is a character, a scene, a moment. That's going to be the beginning. Then, as I write, I begin to perceive an ending. I begin to see a destination, although sometimes that changes. And then, of course, there's the whole middle section looming.

I think the idea of creating a character from scratch, one that has not been done in a novel or an existing story, is immensely exciting, terrifying and ultimately rewarding.

Every pilot I've ever written, I've fallen deeply and madly in love with. It's the only way I work.

I hope the wonder of what happens to my characters never goes away. That yearning keeps me writing.

When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things.

Sometimes I'll get a premise, you know, for a book. In fact, I get those quite often. And I don't commit to it until I really know the voice of that character. It's almost as if the character is speaking to me.

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.