John Burnside Quotes

I don't want to go out hunting for dismal topics to write about.

My cure for writer's block is to step away from the thing I'm stuck on, usually a novel, and write something totally different. Besides fiction, I write poetry, screenplays, essays and journalism. It's usually not the writing itself that I'm stuck on, but thing I'm trying to write. So I often have four or five things going at once.

I don't usually think of my writing as a 'challenge' because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid 'writer's block' all these years.

I don't find it easy to think of good stuff to write about.

Talking about how I might write the next book is like talking about whether or not to have sex. Any dithering ruins it.

Just write what comes to you.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

I mean, if you lined up 100 writers, you'd get 100 different ways in which they write. There's no right way or wrong way to do it; it's whatever your process is.

I've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.'

My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking - then writing.

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

A lot of my ideas for books come from newspaper articles. But I don't like to be actively looking for ideas.

I've always thought that writing isn't really that hard. It's having a good idea that's hard.

I never walk into the studio and say, I'm going to write a song called... 'X' or called 'Slow Me Down.' I write a ton of lyrics, often the title is somewhere in those 10 pages of... I call it brain vomit. It's kind of like whatever comes out of my head and I'm unabashedly just writing it down.

It usually helps me write by reading - somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.

It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.

I'm a really slow writer. What I need to start writing on any given day, is a kernel, a line of dialogue, anything I can sense concretely.

If somebody says that they want to write a book but do not know what to write about, they will never write a book.

When I'm writing, I'll just say random stuff that doesn't make sense, and then a certain word that I keep saying will stick out, and I'll write from there.

All my writer friends outline their books, and I find that hard. It doesn't feel inspired to me. I get bored with that, and really, I just want it to be fun.

When I don't have any story in my mind, I am busy doing foundation work.

Sometimes you don't really know what you're going to write about. I mean, there's times where you get into a writing room and it's a complete flop. And then there's times where you get to a writing room and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just on a roll.'