One of my strengths as a writer is that I'm a good problem-solver. I write these unthinking, ungoverned first drafts. The project for me always is to turn that instinctive stuff into pages that work.
I don't write happy songs. Who does? I don't know anybody who writes happy songs, really.
I write the shopping column. I think I've proven my superficiality.
I focus a little more on pacing when I write books in the young adult category, and of course there's the great American fear of anything sexual, so that's somewhat backed off in YA.
As an intern for Vice President Walter Mondale, I arrived the first day ready to write policy memos and change the world... but my assignment was doing an inventory of the furniture.
But it's the particularity of a place, the physical experience of being in a place, that makes it onto the page. That's why I don't just do library research. I very rarely write about somewhere I haven't been.
For me, the best places to write are on planes, trains and at airports. Not hotel rooms but hotel lobbies. I'm really happy when I'm waiting for a plane and the message comes that it's three hours late. Great, I'll get to write!
I get criticized for a lot of what I write about, but as far as I'm concerned I'm actually standing up and having a look at what goes on in the minds of men, and I have the authority to talk about it because I'm a man.
I think about my audience when I write, to some extent. Thinking of writing for young adults, I try to keep the stories moving, never a dull moment, to hold their interest.
While I was writing 'The Spare Room,' I thought, 'I'm going to look really bad in this book - there's no redeeming this kind of awful, ugly emotion', and I thought, 'I'm not going to change it. I'll call the character 'Helen' and admit to those feelings.' I think this is a reason why people write.
There definitely isn't a structure anymore to how I get ideas. A lot of times I'll just write down a phrase, or I'll have an idea that's attached to just a few chords. Other times, it's work.
That's also why comedy and horror are my two favorite genres of film to write, because you get these outbursts of emotion from people, laughter and shock, and it's really thrilling, and I like to be thrilled.
Free speech and freedom of the press are under attack in the U.K. I cannot return to England, my country, because of my journalistic work with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and at WikiLeaks. There are things I feel I cannot even write.
There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.
The hardest part about writing any song is, what do you write? And how do I rewrite things? You start to run out of ideas that feel fresh.
Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up.
When I switched to screenplays - 'cause I had done musicals and plays - the first assignment in film school was, you have to write a silent film. And it's tremendously helpful to learn how to do that because dialogue can be a crutch. If you can master a silent film, you're golden.
For me, directing a film is like confining myself. I want to do something beyond direction. I can conceive stories, write screenplays, etc. That's better for me.
I'm not promising to write 'JFK 2' - but one day, I might!
Self-editing is the way I write. Ten verses of a song and it's finished. Then we start playing it and if I see that it's too long, I'll start cutting.
When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.
In the Illinois State Capitol, in Springfield, farmer-legislators write the agriculture laws.
I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read.
I haven't read a lot of science fiction, and I never intend to write it; it seems to happen a little bit inadvertently for me, in that I'm trying to follow people into points in their lives that demand that I investigate the future.
We have a memory cut in pieces. And I write trying to recover our real memory, the memory of humankind, what I call the human rainbow, which is much more colorful and beautiful than the other one, the other rainbow.
What makes me write is the rhythm of the world around me - the rhythms of the language, of course, but also of the land, the wind, the sky, other lives. Before the words comes the rhythm - that seems to me to be of the essence.
I don't write anything that I haven't lived. In terms of integrity, you have to write what you live. And if you write beyond what you live, it is theory. And theory is not helpful. It is just not.
I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.
Democracy can tie your hands in a rock 'n' roll band, you know? It can be a great thing, but if you've got a certain amount of vision and you write a lot of songs, it's sometimes better to have your own band and make your own decisions.
I don't decide where I live. My wife decides. She's a curator of contemporary art, and she works at an art museum, so we go wherever she has a job. All basements look the same, so I can write from whatever basement I happen to be living in.
You have to live in order to have something to write about - you get caught up in moviemaking and celebrities and money, and it's very intoxicating, but it doesn't give you what you need as a writer. You have to do something else for that.
Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.
I sometimes wonder why I do so much research - I look at other successful writers, and I think it must just be so relaxing to write about flying horses or something, but I have to make it plausible.
I will tell you that I'm a bit of a snob. I love film, and I would like to work in film, and I'm disappointed that indie film is as hard as it is to work in now. It's hard to get things done, but that sort of work is being done on TV. That's what I do; that's what I write. It's what I love, and hopefully, that's what my future's going to be.
I always encourage people in the early parts of their career to focus on writing. If you can communicate clearly, if you can articulate a thought, if you can write a great story, then you're going to be successful.
The world is full of CEOs that think that just because they write a memo or they write a letter inside an annual report or they give a little video speech that gets sent around the company, they think that's what's really going to affect employees.
