Jan Brett Quotes

When you're writing a 25-minute episode that can be anything, sometimes you just start with a character, and you let them walk into the room. Then you let your instinct guide you. That's how we made art when we were 15 years old. And that's so fun to us.

I never plan. I never know what the next page is going to be..... But that's the fun of writing a novel or a story, because I don't know what's going to happen next.

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.

I know Charlie Kaufman really well, for instance. Charlie Kaufman starts a story, and he has no freaking idea where he's going. None. Zero. And he doesn't want to know, because there's a little bit of death in that.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

Writing a story is kind of like surfing, as opposed to the novel, where you use a GPS to get somewhere. With surfing, you kind of jump.

I always worry that knowing too much about a novel or a story early on in writing will close it down - it feels fatalistic in some way.

A lot of times, I'll have a goal, I'll start writing, and I'll end up in some far off place, which is good. It's nice to have a focus, but letting the lyrics write themselves where they need to go is important.

I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it.

I never plan my novels because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I let the story tell itself.

You don't know what inspires you. You like to think you know what inspires you, but in the final analysis I don't think you really do. It's great to look at a blank sheet of paper, you know, and walk up to an instrument and not know what's gonna happen. It's the most challenging thing I do.

I like to sit down every day and not know where the book is going. I have no idea where the book is going to go or how it's going to end as I'm writing it.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

Basically, I just write whatever story grabs me rather than considering the genre.

You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.

I write and draw from the gut. I often don't know what my stories are about until they're done.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

I never had any master plan about directing, and I don't really write.

If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.

It's not so much that I got that idea at some point, it came up naturally because of the improvisational nature of the story I was telling.

And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

Producing a series is like being Lewis and Clark: You know where you're going, you just don't know how you're going to get there. When people say, 'You should create a bible for your show,' I say, 'You don't want a bible. It'll prevent you from making discoveries along the way.' And that's what happened on 'The X-Files.'