Frank D. Gilroy Quotes

I know some writers that have a million novel ideas, but I don't.

I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find the time to write it.

I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels.

Being a playwright is like the equivalent of doing a jigsaw puzzle that has 1,500 pieces, and it's a jigsaw of a blue sky. Not a cloud in sight.

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash.

I sometimes feel as if ideas for a novel kind of pop up like numbers in a bingo tumbler, and then they're ready to go.

I don't know exactly where the ideas come from. One day, a sentence just popped into my head - 'There was going to be trouble, and, hell, he just wasn't in the mood for it' - and I knew I had a novel.

Whenever I write a novel, most of the time it starts with barest slip of an idea.

Once I have a story idea I like it doesn't even matter to me what genre it is, I'm just so happy to have one.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

And once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I don't fret over lost time - I can always use the situations in a novel.

I do see myself as someone who has a lot of story ideas.

Quite often, little germs of ideas have come from something that I've observed or someone's told me. The process of it becoming fiction is expanding and extending it: stretching the rubber band of reality.

You never know how - or when - the idea for a book will appear.

I hate thinking about writer's block! I don't have writer's block much, knock on wood, but if I do, I think it's usually because I haven't done enough research and am therefore unable to create a fully realized world.

My favourite part of writing a book is thinking up the ideas, and that can start a long time before I actually sit down at my desk.

Each book first begins with a little idea.

I take in a lot of stuff from real life, movies, television, news and it all gets mixed in my head and somehow turns into a story idea.

If one day a TV series comes into my head, and that is what I want to write, I'll write it. It just depends what story is in my brain at the time.

Every day I fantasise about situations and little themes I see in front of me that would make a good beginning of a story. But one has to be disciplined and just sit down and do it.

Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.

I've always thought that writing isn't really that hard. It's having a good idea that's hard.