Johnny Mercer Quotes

When I write a story, I have no idea what I'm doing. All I know is that I want to share something with my readers. The whole idea of writing is this place where you lose control, where you're irresponsible - it's a very liberating place.

That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don’t want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don’t enjoy doing it. I’m not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences.

With my writing, I generally just pretend that no one's reading it. I allow myself that delusion so that I can write the things that I write.

I envy certain writers, because there are writers who do go into a kind of different zone, where the writing isn't controlled anymore.

When I'm sitting at my computer writing, I really have this fiendish smile on my face. I am not thinking about the past or the future or how it's going to be received. I feel that I'm very lucky that way; I don't carry that particular anxiety around with me. I'm not anxiety-free by any means, but that happens to be one that I've been spared.

In the end I write the novels I need to write when I need to write them.

I publish a piece in order to kill it, so that I won't have to fool around with it any longer.

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.

The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all instances you try to write good sentences. But in a novel you're free to do whatever you want, and in the autobiographical works you can't make things up.

Writing is the basis of all, because creating something that didn't even exist before is like taking an empty canvass. It is a wonderful thing to make something out of nothing. You've got an empty page, you've got an idea, and then you start typing and that is the most thrilling thing of all. And then if it becomes a movie or something else that's a plus, but the original writing of it is what's very exciting.

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears.

I know that if I have been working on one paragraph and I have written it three times, it goes in the bin. Unless it comes straight out, it is wrong, it is awkward, it does not fit.

I don't set boundaries for myself when I am writing; if I did, I would be paralyzed from the start, unable to write a word on the page.

I don't write with any audience in mind. I just write. I take a chance on the audience. That's what I did originally, and I think it's worked--in the sense that I find there is an audience.

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

You have to write the book that wants to be written.

People have to be given permission to write, and they have to be given space to breathe and stumble. They have to be given time to develop and to reveal what they can do.

While I'm writing, I'm far away; and when I come back, I've gone.

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

Don't get discouraged if you're hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong. You're allowed to get it wrong, as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.

When I sit down to write a book, I don't ask myself, "How many am I going to sell?"

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 sometimes have to write for a while before I figure it out, pretend that I know what I'm doing, sort of like ad-libbing on stage until you remember your line - you hope you sound convincing to the audience. The key is to have enough material, enough threads, so that there's something that can be satisfyingly drawn to a conclusion.