Francesca Lia Block Quotes

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

I get to do what I love every day. I get to crawl into someone else's head and I love that.

I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry.

Oh how I wish I could be as obsessive as Carrie from 'Homeland' when I'm writing a book! That would save me a lot of trouble during the revision process.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.

Do you love this story? If you love it, then you've got to write it.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

Storytelling is what lights my fire.

Writing a novel is a huge adventure; when it's going well it's more fun than fun. When it stutters to a halt put it aside. Go for a swim, go for a walk, take a week off. Don't panic or be afraid; you and your characters are in it together. Trust them to come to your rescue.

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.

I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.

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.

I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context.

I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.

I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.

I can't tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them.

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.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

I tend to plan as I write. And I want to leave myself open and the character open to keep on going until it seems to be the time to stop.

I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.

I find that it's really important for me to imagine characters and situations. That allows me a lot of freedom.

I'm really trying to stop setting my plays in this one fictional town in Vermont.