Organizing Ideas Quotes

Writing is a form of herding. I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.

I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.

I first considered writing 'New York' in 1991. I'd been in the city for a decade, was married to an American wife, and sending my children to New York schools. I was even on the board of a coop building. But I wasn't sure how to organize such complex material, and for many years I put the project aside.

I spend a lot of time outlining before I write the first word.

I know some writers are meticulous planners, but I'm not one of them.

I jump around in the plotting stage, where I basically just make a bulleted list of every damn thing that happens in the entire book.

I'm a relatively disciplined writer who composes the whole book before beginning to execute and write it. Of course, you can't hold - you cannot imagine a whole novel before you write it; there are limits to human memory and imagination. Lots of things come to your mind as you write a book, but again, I make a plan, chapter, know the plot.

The logic for me, in writing it is that the different areas or different years are almost like different rooms.

When the initial little impulse comes it just tends to come. I wake up in the middle of the night, or I'll be swimming in the pool with my kids and just think, "Can't forget that one." Then there's the more organized side of the brain, which is when I choose to work on them. I've learned through a bunch of mentors how to demarcate the different times for your writing process. I keep multiple projects going at once and there's a time when no matter what you're doing, you have to stop and write it because it's coming.