I write nearly every day. Some days I write for ten or eleven hours. Other days I might only write for three hours. It really depends on how fast the ideas are coming.
I wrote 'Legends of the Fall' in nine days, but I had been thinking about it for a few years.
I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.
When really writing I'm not a good friend. Because writing disorganizes the social self, you become atomized. It scrambles you, sometimes to the point that I'm incapable of speech. I feel that if I start speaking, I'll lose the writing, like getting off the treadmill.
I think there are some writers - like, if you read Kerouac, I think you probably need to take a little break before you sit down to the typewriter because he's the type of writer whose voice infects you.
As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough – I wrote faster than I would write a letter – two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.
So many writers don't like to write... I like to write, and sometimes I'm afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don't want to leave it. And as a result, I'll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.
Writing is a deeply immersive experience. When the words are flying, the house could be burgled and I wouldn’t notice. I have a low boredom threshold and I like intensity – writing is a way of escaping the quotidian.
When you're writing, you're in a totally different zone... I can start a difficult poem and look up at the clock and see to my astonishment that three hours have passed.
I got into my usual obsessive writing frenzy, using all the material I'd worked on for so long and crafting it into a little novel [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries].
If I'm writing a furiously angry scene, I have to consciously snap out of it when I shut down the computer, or I find myself growling at my family.
Unless I'm really uneasy with what I'm writing, I lose interest very quickly.
Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it.
You cannot write a book unless it is totally inhabiting your imagination and you are totally engrossed with it. Which is a kind word for obsession.
My writing regimen is not very regimented. I tend to be a binge writer, working sometimes in the morning and sometimes all night. When I get going I like to hunch over the keyboard until I feel totally played out.
I always write like the devil's behind me with a whip. I'm going to write because I like it. Then I'm going to write another.
The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day.
The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.
When I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces.
One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a 'binge' writer - like a binge drinker. I go on binges.
At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.
Many people have told me that my books read like novels. Perhaps this is because, when I write, I feel I am really there, so strong is my feeling for my subject. On occasion, I have been so moved by the events I have been describing that I have felt like crying.
When I get an idea, I start to write like I was electrically motivated.
Ignore all advice about writing. Leave your blood on every page. Every page!
I find the ones that have the most emotional weight, the heaviest songs. For some reason, for me, they're usually the ones I write the quickest. I put more work into uplifting material, I think, sometimes.
