Creative Preparation Quotes

I definitely want to write some fiction, for sure. I already have half of the next book. I already have it all mapped out. I'm ready. I'm ready to bring it to the world.

It was important on The Shipping News to have my house far enough away from each location so I had this time in the morning to think about my shots and still remain open to surprises once I got to the set.

I use a computer, but before I begin each new book I keep a notebook. I write down everything that comes to mind during that period before I actually begin. It might take months or weeks. That notebook is my security blanket so that I never have to face a blank screen (or blank page). But I print out often and my best ideas usually come with a pencil in my hand.

Usually, I have a lot of acquaintance with the story before I start writing it. When I didn't have regular time to give to writing, stories would just be working in my head for so long that when I started to write I was deep into them. Now, I do that work by filling notebooks.

I always craft my words to the point where I think and hope they're perfect before I ever begin sketching.

Anton brings the camera. I'll bring a tuba, wear black, not shave, and take us to a burned-down Chinese restaurant. (On being photographed by his longtime photo collaborator Anton Corbijn)

If you're a theater director, you're not going to be prepared for the technical side. And if you're a technical director, you're not going to be prepared for the acting side. The only thing you can do is go through the meat grinder of your first film.

A lot of new artists sign their deal and then go into a development stage for a year or two or sometimes never get out of it. For me, because I had been a working songwriter in town, I had a collection of songs that I was ready to make into an album. At the time, I didn't realize it was becoming an album, but it was.

I wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it.

Working as an AD and producer prepares you in the sense that you know what you have to do to make a film. But nothing prepares you for your first film.

Film brings together framing and light and color and performance and music and all of that. To me, everything I've done in my life has been preparing me for filmmaking.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell ... In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.

In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative.

In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative.....A lot of habitually creative people have preparation rituals linked to the setting in which they choose to start their day. By putting themselves into that environment, they begin their creative day.

Maybe in this Star Wars world maybe subconsciously I was preparing myself. But I've just found all of my ideas I've been coming up with are big sci-fi things, and I wanted to do a big epic, a big space opera, and this is it. This is mine.

And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.

Norman Mailer records in his recent essays and public appearances his perfecting of himself as a virile instrument of letters; he is perpetually in training, getting ready to launch himself from his own missile pad into a high, beautiful orbit; even his failures may yet be turned to successes.

My monochrome pictures are not my definite works, but the preparation for my works. They are the leftovers from the creative processes, the ashes. My pictures, after all, are only the title-deeds to my property which I have to produce when I am asked to prove that I am a proprietor.

I live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems?

I really spend as long as I can sketching everything out and working on the structure before I sit down to type out scenes.

By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.

When I find stuff that's interesting, I try to get a hold of it so that when I do need to make something really cool, I have it on hand.

Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.

Every morning like a scholar at his first class I prepare a blank mind for the day to write upon.

I think all of the decisions I make about my life and writing are the preparation - what I choose to write about and the immersive nature of the lifestyle I choose for playwriting.