Kay Cannon Quotes

I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit.

I don't fiddle or edit or change while I'm going through that first draft.

When I'm writing something, I try not to get analytical about it as I'm doing it, as I'm writing it.

For me, you have to not have a formula. You have to not even sit down and say, 'I want to write right now.' It has to just kind of come out. It's not something you can plan.

Sometimes I think my writing sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

When I sit down to write, I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.

I spill it out as fast as I can. I don't really edit. In Brazil, recently, I wrote 70 pages. In London, 80 pages.

I've never been a fast writer.

Not intending to be funny: I sit at the keyboard, put my fingers on the keys and go. To me, it's the real secret of writing. Put yourself in front of the screen or the blank sheet of paper and get to work.

Write in a disciplined manner, but write in a way that is natural to the individual's thought processes.

One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word.

My writing routine is: get son off to school and sit down at 8 A.M. I read what I wrote the day before, and then write longhand, into a notebook. I prefer paper and pen because it feels closer to my brain.

I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.

In my office I have a sign that says, 'Don't think. Just write!' and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, or even each sentence or paragraph. For me, stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

I write totally spontaneously. I actually write fiction by hand - that always seems to startle people. I think the reason I do that is to bypass the thinking part of me and get to the more unconscious part, which is where all the good ideas seem to be.

The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.

I work every day until I do not have more to say. I learned from Graham Greene that a very good way is to stop work in the middle of a sentence. Then you know exactly how to continue the day after.

As a writer, I can't really take days off. Writing is like creating an art. Once you stop writing, you can lose your rhythm and context, meaning that your writing may lose its power.

I do not set specific work hours as some writers do. I generally stay with a chapter until I am satisfied, do very little rewriting, and if a scene is going well, I've been known to keep night owl hours.

I've always thought of myself as an organic writer, rather than a cerebral one. I feel my way along as I go, hoping I'll get to the place I intend to reach.

I'm not reading what I write when I wrote. It's an unconscious outpouring that's a mess, and it's many, many steps away from anything anyone would want to read. Creating that way seems to generate the most interesting material for me to work with, though.

I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline. I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together.

I am very spontaneous when I write; it kind of just comes out. I never think about what I'm going to write about first... it just sort of comes out like word vomit.