It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.
We just try to write about things that are close to our hearts. We don't sit around trying to write another 'Free Bird' or 'Sweet Home Alabama.'
My boys asked me to write beautiful letters for their ex-girls so they could get them back. I thought, 'I should be writing songs for myself.'
If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.
I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.
When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar.
But, George and Steven asked me to write the Indiana Jones sequels, and I didn't want to.
I always write 'Fight' on the mirrors - that goes way back to the times when you had to fight apathy.
We write for those who get the musical jokes. But for those who don't, there is always something else going on. That's why we have such a widespread audience.
I've had fun doing romantic comedies, but I just can't anymore. There's nothing fulfilling creatively, there's nowhere to grow, nothing to learn from it or for yourself. I'd rather just be home with my family or write music until that special project comes my way.
I don't think I ever write songs involving politics, because they get dated way too quick. Any view you have can usually be made into something more general, and that can stand throughout time.
I spend a lot of time preparing. I think a lot about what I want to do. I have prep books, little notebooks in which I write everything down before a sitting. Otherwise I would forget my ideas.
I never know what I'm going to write next. If I'm still writing the book but I'm very near the end, and I begin to think of what I'd like to do next, then I'll know that what I'm writing is in hand. I'll think of an ending and it will be fine.
I've been writing for a long time, and I've loved comic books for a long time - forever - but I had to learn how to write in a different way to write sequential art for a graphic novel. It's been an interesting transition.
I'm an efficient, good, professional reporter. But I also write. And so what I try to do is write about places that I know that I care about intensely and write about them in a way that conveys the fact that I care.
Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
You're not allowed to write about me if you haven't seen 'The Shawshank Redemption.' See it and then get back to me.
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
'Made it as a writer'? I'm still wondering if I've made it as a writer. I've made it as a published writer of the type of SF that I want to write and read, but I'm still waiting for that big breakthrough.
I had a friend write me that our music was being played at Gay Pride in New York, which is a big compliment. In the biggest city in the country with the most culture and the most grit - I love it.
You must write for children in the same way as you do for adults, only better.
When I think of the things that I want to write, I can never say them out loud because I know how crazy they sound. I know what things sound like when you haven't actually worked on the script, so I don't go around saying some of these ideas because they just sound awful.
'Hill St.' was very good, but it was very impersonal work for me. I wrote about that place as if I was a visitor. It wasn't what my life was like. It was a great place to learn the craft of how to shape a scene, but I wanted a chance to write about more personal themes and obsessions.
Capitol Records were very keen for me to write and see how I got on; I think that is what defined my sound. The first session I had was with two young up-and-coming writers, Nick Atkinson and Tom Wilding, and I went into a session a bit nervous because I hadn't written that many songs before.
I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.
And in Hollywood, you know, everyone is an expert. Most of them are expert editors. They can't direct, they can't write, they can't act, but, by God, they all think they can edit.
Well, it's a badge of honour for any self-respecting poet to be criticized by Auberon Waugh. But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.
I decided to write short stories because they got rejected quicker.
I write poetry on my iPhone. I've got about 100 poems on there.
Although Patterson Beams was not my first plug-in, I knew from the beginning that I would write it, because the single biggest time consuming factor for me was editing each beam manually.
Bantam Press. And they commissioned me to write it. And when that was completed, they sold it to Harper and Row. And then I put it out to every movie studio in town. And they all turned it down.
When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.
It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration.
I've tried to write from my own understanding of identity in all my comics, whether it's about superheroes or historical conflicts or monkey gods.
Since the big band started I'm just always swamped with movies and things. It certainly pays the bills and it's very satisfying, because I get to write all these big charts and all this crazy music.
