Jennifer Egan Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.

  Jennifer Egan

  Reading, Writing, Levels

• I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn’t have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen.

  Jennifer Egan

  Block, Writing, Thinking

• We lie. That's what we do. You're selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.

  Jennifer Egan

  Lying, Writing, Bullshit

  Jennifer Egan (2009). “Look at Me: A Novel”, p.98, Anchor

• We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

  Jennifer Egan

  Reading, Writing, Culture

  Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. May 12, 2011.

• Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff...forms a base on which to build something better.

  Jennifer Egan

  Writing, Stuff, Form

• That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.

  Jennifer Egan

  Writing, Opposites, Way

• We're [writers] all afraid of writing badly, and there are psychological reasons, like the bad interior of ourselves is somehow being revealed, but we all fear that, and you can't write well if you're not willing to write badly. That's why you have to make writing a habit, so it feels normal and not strange.

  Jennifer Egan

  Writing, Normal, Strange

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some reason. I don't think I would write it on a typewriter either. I write in a very blind gut instinctive way. It just doesn't feel right. There's a physical connection. And then in nonfiction that's not the case at all. I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand.

  Jennifer Egan

  Writing, Thinking, Technology

• Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

  Jennifer Egan

  Writing, Stuff, Regularity

• One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.

  Jennifer Egan

  Writing, Feelings, Trouble

• But I always need to identify with a character to write about him or her - and by "identify," I mean see the world through that person's eyes and have a strong sense of the inner logic of their acts and decisions, wacky or wrongheaded though they might be. In that sense, I think there's some of me in all of them.

  Jennifer Egan

  Strong, Writing, Character

  "How 'the Goon Squad' came to be". Interview with Christian DuChateau, www.cnn.com. April 24, 2011.

• I hope to keep writing journalism as long as I write fiction; it's afforded me such amazing adventures and opportunities. It does take a lot of time, so it's hard to do both at once, but I try to do a big journalism piece every couple of years, and I'll hopefully continue with that.

  Jennifer Egan

  Couple, Writing, Adventure

  "How 'the Goon Squad' came to be". Interview with Christian DuChateau, www.cnn.com. April 24, 2011.

• I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

  Jennifer Egan

  Block, Writing, Thinking

• Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

  Jennifer Egan

  Writing, Years, Squad

  "Jennifer Egan: 'I would have accepted a marriage proposal from Roger Daltrey on the spot'". Interview with Killian Fox, www.theguardian.com. August 20, 2011.

• I write my first draft by hand, at least for fiction. For non-fiction, I write happily on a computer, but for fiction I write by hand, because I'm trying to achieve a kind of thoughtless state, or an unconscious instinctive state. I'm not reading what I write when I wrote. It's an unconscious outpouring that's a mess, and it's many, many steps away from anything anyone would want to read. Creating that way seems to generate the most interesting material for me to work with, though.

  Jennifer Egan

  Reading, Writing, Hands

  Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. May 12, 2011.

• I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.

  Jennifer Egan

  Writing, Trying, Worst

• A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work.

  Jennifer Egan

  Writing, Ideas, Interesting

  Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. May 12, 2011.

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