Quotes About Writing

When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

I tend to start with a kernel, a vague concept, and just begin to write things down - notes about a character, lines of dialogue, descriptive passages about a place. One idea fires another. I do that for about a year. By then there's a story, and I'll go on to a complete first draft that sews many of those ragtag pieces together.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

All I had when I began writing the first book was rather vague images conjured up by the notion of a man in a kilt, so essentially I began with Jamie, although I had no idea what his name was at the time.

I'm the opposite of someone like David Grossman, who knows how his characters walk, and how they smell. I don't allow myself to imagine what mine look like at all. My sense of them comes from the inside. They remain, by necessity, physically vague in my mind.

As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.

I want my stories to be understood and enjoyed by anyone, so I need 'beta-readers' who will tell me when the plot is working or not working, and when my writing is concise or vague.

I never outline my novels before I write. I do have a vague sense of beginning, middle, and end at the outset of each book, but for me, writing has always been a very character-driven process.

The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.

Every weekday morning, I picture my first paragraph while I hike with my dog Milo near Mulholland Drive, looking out over the San Fernando Valley. I edit the paragraph, then memorize it, so that when I get back home and sit down at my computer, the blank screen's tyranny lasts only a second or two. A brief reign!

I used to write in a room overlooking the valley from where I could see too much, whether checking the sheep and alpacas or seeing the trout rise on the lake.

I was just sitting on my bed in a dormitory room, and I started writing. The thing that was magic about it was that once you put down one word, you could cross it out. I figured that out right away. I put down 'mountain,' and then I'd go, 'No - 'valley.' That's better.'

Silicon Valley,' I mean, the comedy is amazing, and it's one of the best-written shows with some of the best talent. I'm really happy to be a part of it.

Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don't really know about its value to the student. I don't mean it's useless. But I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.

As writers, we can't predict who might come along who might find our offerings valuable.

Anything you write, even if you have to start over, is valuable. I let the story write itself through the characters.

I'm not much given to making shamanistic remarks about all this, but I'm a great believer in the dream life. If I can carry without spilling whatever it is that drips into my head in the night to my desk, then that's valuable.

I remain convinced that the most valuable use of time for a newly published author is to write a second book that's even better than the first, and a third that's better than the second, and on and on.

Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.

There's a whole thing now in the entertainment industry that's like, 'You need to write for yourself. Those are the people that are really valuable.' And it's just like, 'I don't want to! I just want to act!'

I write the occasional poem. I think my dabbling in poetry makes me better at screenplays. Poetry teaches the value of condensing, the importance of talking in a few words.

Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on.