Writer's Instinct Quotes

I would encourage you as a screenwriter to trust your story and don't make notes for the actors or don't make notes for the reader.

A book of mine is always a matter of fate. There is something unpredictable about the process of writing, and I cannot prescribe for myself any predetermined course.

Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer.

One doesn't choose to become a writer. One is just born that way.

I don't know if I have a memory of not thinking I was a writer - it goes that far back. I went to law school because I didn't know how to earn a living otherwise. I tried to ignore the pull, but it wouldn't let me.

I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.

That's something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

You can't teach somebody how to be a good writer.

I don't make outlines or plans because whenever I do, they turn out to be useless. It is as if I am compelled to violate the scope of any outline or plan; it is as if the writing does not want me to know what is about to happen.

You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow.

Basically, I just write whatever story grabs me rather than considering the genre.

I don't like outlining, because books are organic things. Sometimes a book doesn't want to be written in a certain way.

Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.

When the narrative itself starts knocking on the glassed-in box that was your prescription for how you were going to write this novel... you have to listen to it.

I did what most writers do when something happens that's overwhelming, fascinating, moving, all of that. I didn't know what else to do about it except write about it.

See, what I don't like listening to is when writers go, 'And then the person cries.' 'Or the person does this.' It's there, but it's not the Bible. I wait and see what happens to me on the day.

Larry Grobel has the illness of all writers, he can't help himself. You're talking to him and all of a sudden, you say, "He's puttin' that in his cash register!"

I do not know if you bridle your pen, but when my pencil moves, it is necesary to let it go, or - crash!... nothing more.

My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

Structure that really pays off is all based on emotion. I don't write down an elaborate plan. It's really done by feel. It's one area of my writing that I think I've got surer at as I've evolved. In my work you often get an abrupt shift in time, a jolt. But the emotional logic will take the reader on. I hope. I trust. After all, our memories do not work with any sequential logic.

No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not.

You should never ask, 'What would the readers like now?' Instead, you should ask, 'What would I like if I was a reader?' And then you must trust your own mind.