Mary Steenburgen Quotes

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

I write a lot in my head. I've never been driven to write things down.

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

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

I think a lot of people in their average day actually imagine two sides of a conversation at one point or another. I think that the mental trick of holding two sides of a conversation in your head is actually something that we all do.

Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.

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.

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.

Stories come to me and I don't know where they come from, but afterwards I can look back and say, 'Oh yes, that's got a little bit of me, or a little bit of my own son in it'. That's where ideas come from.

My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.

Writing is hard.

I love writing. It's one of my favorite jobs. Of the things I get to do, I love sitting in a room and coming up with ideas, and I love going home and pounding them out.

I keep drawing inspiration from people every day. All of a sudden, something strikes me so hard and dramatically, and then a dream comes - I sit down, cut it off and make a script out of it.

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.

Writing is the process of asking the next logical question.

I actually feel that the different kinds of stories come out of different parts of my brain.

I don't see the world unless I see it in ink.

To be a writer is to connect and to play and to attempt to see clearly and understand. It astounds me regularly that feeling things deeply and writing them down is basically my job description.

Part of a writer's job is just spacing out, looking into the air and imagining things.

Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.

I seem to have a natural tendency to want to share my own observations and feelings with other people, and writing seems to be the way I'm best equipped to do that.

I tend to start with a kernel, a vague concept, and just begin to write things down - notes about a character, lines of dialogue, descriptive passages about a place. One idea fires another. I do that for about a year. By then there's a story, and I'll go on to a complete first draft that sews many of those ragtag pieces together.

My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.

Language for me narrates the pictures in my mind.