I can sit in my room and write a song that I think might be a hit. I can sort of make myself do that, and then I'll play it to a friend, and they'll say, 'Oh, that's nice.' But when something happens to me, and I sit down and write a song to get rid of my emotions, they'll turn around and say, 'Wow, that's great.'
I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ordinary person I've ever met... He's the leader of a small group of people who hope to cure a sick world, and I hope my book can help in some small way.
If you don't like my book, write your own. If you don't think you can write a novel, that ought to tell you something. If you think you can, do. No excuses. If you still don't like my novels, find a book you do like.
I wanted to write it long before I wrote Every Night, Josephine! I'd been thinking about it a long time.
If you write something down on paper, it becomes an actual goal. Before you write it down, it's a thought, a dream that may or may not get done.
It slightly depends on your perspective, sort of how you look at these things, but when I sit down to write a script, I'm not planning to write a script; I'm planning to make a film, and so I only see the script as being just a step there.
The fact that my songs take a long time to write is no guarantee of their excellence.
People may get tired of hearing from me, but I don't think I'll ever run out of things that I want to write about.
I write based on powerful inner impulses, and those seem to shift over time.
The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.
Mental health is seen as a massive drag to have to write about - worthy, dull. Something you should 'have' to read / write about.
A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.
I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.
I think I write songs because of pent-up feelings.
I write every day.
I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.
You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not.
The way I personally work is I like to write what I know, what I feel, and also where I am.
So one can say that I write all the time, that goes for the lyrics as well.
Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.
My life has been many examples of shortsighted goals that I thought would fix things. You know, if there's something broken inside me, if there's a hole in there, I thought: If I could just write a good song someday, then I'd be OK. You know, if I could just be on stage in front of people I'd never seen before and be validated by them.
I always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.
Rock stars wanting to write is even worse than wanting to act in movies, right?
I write screenplays that don't get made and pilots that don't get picked up, and I re-write other people's movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.
I think the moment you start trying to please a fan base is when you start going downhill. I'm going to always, always write about what I want, even if it doesn't necessarily cater to most of them.
Write about what you want to know.
I decided to write about the myths of divorce.
My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.
Sometimes I get in writing moods and I want to write a song every couple of days. Then sometimes I may not write a song for three weeks. It's just according to how it's hitting me at the time.
When people write comedy from neutrality, it just gets kind of silly.
Men have a lot less to write about, unless you're somebody like Tom Waits or John Lennon. And the female voice is much more suited to melody. Men have this barky thing - we're domesticated apes with a microphone.
I never thought I could write fiction.
I didn't have to say it. I just had to write it. It was painful enough.
I've met the Queen a couple of times, and she's been delightful. In fact, I often find myself thinking: 'What would the Queen do in this situation? Write a thank-you note? Yes, I'll do that.' She's all about courtesy.
Some people manage their writing by saying, 'I need to get 2,000 words written today,' others by saying, 'I will write for X hours.' Not me. I start with a plan for the book, break it down into scenes, and I know what scenes need to get written each day. If the scene takes more words than I thought, so be it.
You know, people sometimes say to me, 'Do you prefer to do this or that, act or do stand-up or write' but the thing that I enjoy most is the difference between all of them, because you're always learning. I don't go around thinking of myself as a great anything. I'm actually lucky to have the chance to fail at all of them.
