Steven Stucky Quotes

But I do have an idea in my head before I go in about what I'm going to do.

Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write.

The hardest thing for me is getting started. If I'm writing a script, really 90 per cent of it would be just walking around, climbing the walls, just trying to put the idea together. Then the final 10 per cent would be writing it.

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

I hibernate. I hibernate until the next project takes shape in my mind.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten hours a week writing. The writing is going on all the time in my head; the trick is to capture it. Showers are great. Traffic jams are great.

I always write after I think for quite a long time, so the actual writing time is rather short. I think a lot of the work gets done when you have something on your mind while you're doing many other things.

I get an idea about something. I just start thinking about it, and then I get onstage and I talk about it, and then I think about it some more and talk about it some more, and think about it some more and talk about it some more, until it starts to take a shape.

If I don't have a model in front of me, I don't have an idea.

My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.

I usually write things in my head before I ever write them down. When I write it out, usually I've already figured out what it is I'm trying to do.

I've never really had any trouble coming up with ideas; they just grow, like weeds. The weeding is the hard part.

I don't know what the creative process is. I don't know how to trick it into starting or how to egg it on.

Think of the imagination as a giant stone from which we carve out new ideas. As we chip away, our new ideas become more polished and refined. But if you start by editing your imagination, you start with a tiny stone.

Write first, worry later.

What I have to write, the story, it is always going on in my mind. What incidences I can add in the story - it is a continuous process.

I have a lot of sketches and ideas, but when you don't use them, they get stale.

Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in nonlinear ways, to make unexpected leaps.

When I first have an idea, I'll spit-ball it with my husband: he's my beautiful ideas sounding board. I usually have a year deadline from start to finish, so I'll piss about for three months and pretend to get started. Then there's four to six months of actual writing and, after that, submissions, edits, and eventually a finished product.

A lot of times, somebody will say something and it will give you a good title. So you carry a pencil with you and jot that down. You don't just write a song right quick, though. You fool around and work with it. You have to keep going over and over it and see if you can't write a song that means something.

Sometimes I do that quite a lot, go back and forth a lot between ideas. Try things out.

Nothing, believe me, nothing is more satisfying to me personally than getting a great idea and then beatin' it to death.

I don't really like to write at a desk. I like to write when driving in a car. ... Once you're working on it, you're working on it all the time, and sometimes stuff'll come in the middle of the night, in a dream or something. Your mind is working on it all the time.