“I started blogging in 2006 when I had sold my first novel but it had not yet been published, in those anxious months in between while I learned the whole process.” FirstsWholeProcessNovelMonthsAnxiousBlogging Author:Laini Taylor
“Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.” PeopleWritingDifferentCharacterProcessVoiceRoomsNovelTvsJokesTranslate Author:Jennifer Weiner
“At the risk, then, of being shunned by some of my gloomier peers, I venture to tell you that writers work like demons, suffer greatly, and are also happy, in unmistakable ways, some of the time. If we had no knowledge of happiness, our novels wouldn't sufficiently resemble real life. Some of us are even made a little bit happy, on occasion, by the writing process itself. I mean, really, if there wasn't some sort of enjoyment to be derived, would any of us keep doing it?” IfsWayWritingMeanLittlesMadeRealSufferingBitsProcessNovelRiskLittle BitReal LifeOccasionsEnjoymentDemonPeersVentureWriting Process Author:Michael Cunningham
“Eragon started as me but ended up evolving into his very own character, .. Even as he has gone through his coming- of- age story, the process of writing and publishing these novels has been my own coming- of- age story. There are parallels between my own experience and Eragon's, but fortunately, I don't have people charging at me with swords.” PeopleWritingHas BeensCharacterStoriesAgeProcessMy OwnNovelGoneEvolveComing Of AgePublishingParallelsChargingEragon Author:Christopher Paolini
“There is a fine line I have to walk throughout the writing process in a novel. It is this line between drama and melodrama, and it is this line between evoking genuine emotional power and being manipulative.” WritingProcessLinesWalksNovelEmotionalFineDramaGenuineWriting ProcessFine LinesMelodramaManipulativeEmotional Power Author:Nicholas Sparks
“People think that they will sit down and produce the great American novel in one sitting. It doesn't work that way. This is a very patient and meticulous work, and you have to do it with joy and love for the process, not for the outcome.” PeopleThinkingWayJoyProcessNovelProduceSittingAnd LoveDown AndPatientOutcomesGreat AmericanMeticulous Author:Isabel Allende
“This is, if not a lifetime process, it's awfully close to it. The writer broadens, becomes deeper, becomes more observant, becomes more tempered, becomes much wiser over a period time passing. It is not something that is injected into him by a needle. It is not something that comes on a wave of flashing, explosive light one night and say, 'Huzzah! Eureka! I've got it!' and then proceeds to write the great American novel in eleven days. It doesn't work that way. It's a long, tedious, tough, frustrating process, but never, ever be put aside by the fact that it's hard.” IfsWayWritingLongHardFactsLightNightProcessNovelPeriodsToughLifetimeWaveDeeperPassingPassingsWiserFrustratingOne NightElevenNeedlesTediousTime PassingExplosivesGreat AmericanTime PassesObservantPassing It Author:Rod Serling
“The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a character, or something you read in a paper, that seems to go off, like a solar flare inside your head.” WritingMomentsCharacterSeemsProcessSituationNovelPaperRecognitionFlareSolar Flares Author:Martin Amis
“Dystopian novels help people process their fears about what the future might look like; further, they usually show that there is always hope, even in the bleakest future.” PeopleLooksHelpingShowsMightProcessNovelDystopian Author:Lauren Oliver
“Douglas Adams did not enjoy writing, and he enjoyed it less as time went on. He was a bestselling, acclaimed, and much-loved novelist who had not set out to be a novelist, and who took little joy in the process of crafting novels. He loved talking to audiences. He liked writing screenplays. He liked being at the cutting edge of technology and inventing” WritingLittlesJoyProcessEnjoyTalkingTechnologyNovelAudienceCuttingEdgesEnjoyedNovelistsScreenplaysInventingCutting Edge Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“Scrivener is where I live. I'm planning the next novel, two screenplays and a couple of short stories with it and it's amazing how fluid the software makes the process. I genuinely think this is the biggest software advance for writers since the word processor.” ThinkingTwoStoriesNextProcessNovelCouplePlanningSoftwareShort StoryFluidScreenplaysProcessors Author:Michael Marshall Smith
“The subject of the novel is reality liberated from soul. The reader in complete independence presented with a structured process:let him evaluate it, not the author. The façade of the novel cannot be other than stone or steel, flashing electrically or dark, but silent.” SoulRealityProcessDarkNovelSubjectsReaderStonesIndependenceSilentSteelObjectivityLiberatedEvaluate Author:Alfred Doblin
“After the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of "this is what I'm going to write" - the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper. I feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and I know that the details are there already, that in fact I would see them plainly if I looked closer, but I prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me.” IfsKnowsFeelsWritingMindFirstsKindFactsInspirationWaitingProcessNovelGoes OnDevelopmentPaperTasksDetailsRecognitionGentleShock Author:Vladimir Nabokov
“I think my writing process changes as I gain more life experience... It has taken me many years to be able to write a novel that shows the points of view of people of different ages and personalities.” PeopleThinkingWritingYearsDifferentShowsAgeAbleProcessViewsNovelTakenPersonalityGainsPoint Of ViewLife ExperienceWriting ProcessDifferent Ages Author:Kathleen Winter
“I enjoy writing plays most. I haven't written a radio play in a while and I don't write short stories anymore because the process of submitting them depressed me. I really enjoy revising novels, but drafting them can be a pain.” WritingPlayStoriesPainProcessEnjoyNovelWrittenHavensRadioShort StoryRevisingDraftingRadio Plays Author:Sefi Atta
“The process for writing a picture book is completely different from the process of writing a chapter book or novel. For one thing, most of my picture books rhyme. Also, when I write a picture book I'm always thinking about the role the pictures will play in the telling of the story. It can take me several months to write a picture book, but it takes me several years to write a novel.” ThinkingWritingYearsBookDifferentPlayStoriesProcessRolesNovelOne ThingMonthsTake MeChaptersRhymeAlways ThinkingPicture Books Author:Sarah Weeks
“The more you see, especially being young, the more you see the past, the more you can draw upon that and the more you can make the present and the future. It's how you process the past and at oftentimes in the picture, there are references to certain imagery from certain pictures, and certain novels.” PastYoungCertainProcessNovelDrawsImagery Author:Martin Scorsese
“You can do everything differently in a novel. Hero narrates the novel; we're in his head. You're hearing all his thought processes and you're hearing him call himself out on his bad behavior. You don't have the benefit of that narrator in a movie. What you see a character do, very often, becomes that much more important because you don't have him editorializing it for you.” ImportantCharacterProcessCan DoNovelHeroBehaviorBenefitsHearingNarratorsThought ProcessBad Behavior Author:Jonathan Tropper
“Madame Bovary is one my favorite novels. Emma Bovary will always be an enigma, but as the years pass, I feel that I understand her better. She has a violent nostalgia, almost an infantile nostalgia, to be understood by the men surrounding her. I like her relentless fight for independence, her rebellion against the mediocre, and her quest for the sublime, even if she burns her wigs in the process. I like that Flaubert never judges her morally for her self-destructiveness, for her desperate attempt to satisfy her wildest desires and appetites.” IfsMenFeelsYearsSelfDesireFightingProcessNovelHe ManJudgingUnderstoodIndependenceMy FavoriteNostalgiaViolentDesperateRebellionAppetiteQuestsSublimeMediocreRelentlessLike HerEmmaWigsEnigmaInfantileDestructiveness Author:Sophie Barthes
“I write my novels longhand. I love the feeling of writing; I love to see pen on paper. It feels more creative than typing, and it's a more visual process for me - I can picture the entire scene in my head and am merely writing what I see.” FeelsWritingI CanFeelingsProcessNovelCreativeScenePaperVisualsPensTyping Author:Cecelia Ahern
“For me writing is an organic process that starts with engaging the language and then thinking about the structure of the novel as you move along. Especially in revision you start to notice correlations. Things come up, not self-consciously, because you're busy feeling your way through sentences and trying to push the language into new places.” ThinkingWayWritingTryingSelfFeelingsMovingLanguageProcessNovelStructureBusyCome UpSentencesEngagingRevisionCorrelationNew Places Author:Dana Spiotta
“I've realized that with each novel I seem to set out a kind of puzzle for myself. And I am never sure in the process of writing a first draft how it's all going to turn out.” WritingFirstsKindSeemsTurnsProcessNovelPuzzles Author:Laurie Foos
“I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.” FeelsBookIdeasProcessWatchesNovelCome UpNew Ideas Author:Matt de la Pena
“With my students, I don't offer any simple tips like that, maybe because my own process is pretty messy, but when we workshop we talk a lot about the deeper subject, which is what the story or novel is about. I think defining a narrative's themes can lay bare a narrative's tensions.” ThinkingStoriesProcessMy OwnSimpleNovelSubjectsStudentsOffersLaysDeeperNarrativeTensionThemeDefiningMessyWorkshops Author:Edan Lepucki
“It does no one any good to say their novel sucks if you don't have an idea how to make it better, how to approach it from different angles and make it work. It's obviously a subjective process, right? But the thing about subjectivity, at least in the classroom, is that you're banking on your professor's subjectivity to be both personal and professional - that he or she has some sense about the world outside the workshop.” IfsWorldDoeIdeasDifferentProcessNovelApproachWorking ItProfessorsClassroomAngleBankingSubjectiveSubjectivityWorkshopsDifferent Angles Author:Tod Goldberg
“For me, the process of writing a novel happens mostly in your head before you actually start writing.” WritingHappensProcessNovel Author:Dan Chaon
“In '94, I started writing a novel about an enormous terrorist act that destroyed the United States. The novel takes place twenty years after this destruction, with all the stuff that we're dealing with now - a dirty war, the disappeared, the concept of terrorism. Anyway, 9/11 happened some years into the process, and I was like, OK, I don't have a novel.” WritingYearsWarStatesStuffProcessUnitedUnited StatesNovelHappenedConceptsDestructionTwentiesTerrorismTerroristEnormousDestroyedDirty Author:Junot Diaz
“I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what our processes were and Jane said hers and then I said mine and Jane said, "Well, if I had a student like that I'd force him never to write like that again because you could never write a novel in the way that you write poetry."” IfsWayWritingWellsSaidForceProcessAnswersNovelStudentsMinesPeriodsNovelistsJaneBookstoresQuestions And AnswersSmiley Author:Edward Hirsch
“"Freedom, individualism, authenticity and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: The creative process is the emergence in action of a novel relational product, growing out of the uniqueness of the individual."” PersonsLongArtActionIndividualProcessHurtNovelCreativeGrowingProductsPropertyAuthenticityBeing YourselfIndividualismCreative ProcessUniquenessEmergence Author:Carl Rogers
“For each of my novels, I've had something of a eureka moment of deciding what world I want to set it in - Wall Street, the pop-music industry, Harvard - and what the very vague contours of the narrative might be (which typically get changed a lot through the writing process).” WorldWantWritingMomentsMightProcessNovelStreetsChangedWallIndustryPopsNarrativeVagueWriting ProcessHarvardPop MusicMusic Industry Author:Teddy Wayne