E. L. Doctorow Quotes

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.

I think each time you start a story or novel or whatever, you are absolutely at the bottom of the ladder all over again. It doesn't matter what you've done before.

Writing is this act of faith - a bit like driving in the fog: you can hardly see just in front of you. But you trust God's leading you and you just write into the space you can see ahead of you.

Writing a book is as different from digital curation as night and day. Digital curation is a series of split-second decisions: good/no good. It can even be done algorithmically. Writing is process-intensive activity.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

One word after another. That's the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it's the only way to do it. So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.

Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next.

I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it. You may be ashamed of it later, but that's another story.

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick.

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

My writing is progressing slowly, but at least it's moving forward. I'm sure that's the case. The only problem is that I'm never absolutely certain that what I've written is any good.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet.

In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next - sometimes you even make a little outline - but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new - and for me, a very invigorating - experience.

I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!

In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome.

In the early days, it was, you know, I used to weep while I was writing. I used to grab at any kind of anything, any hint, any tip of how to make it easy.

It's that drama that drives authors, you know.

The writing process isn't something I'm in love with. I'm an illustrator who writes.

When you're in the throes of writing, I find, the lessons you've casually imparted to others are not in the forefront of your mind. Which may be good or bad. Probably both.

If you're a writer, you know there are ways in which we don't know what we're doing at all. We're working out mysteries in a sort of poetic realm, and hoping that if a story is honest, if you're dragging the deep truth out of yourself, then something good and profound might come out of it.