I kind of like to write fast. It keeps the pacing up. And it keeps me off the streets.
I write best late at night, when everyone in the house has gone to bed. There's something magical about that late night silence that appeals to me.
I taught high school English for 24 years. I always teach my students to appreciate the beauty of language and to write poetically.
I considered that I had to write stories about the people I had met, with whom I'd worked, the history of my books - just in case I up and die.
Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write.
I like to write stories that read like historical fiction about great, world-changing events through the lens of a flawed protagonist.
I write the occasional entry for the 'Times' Theatre blog, especially when I'm in London and seeing two shows a day, but I don't tweet. I don't want to have to express my opinion in 140 characters. That's like writing haiku. You need a certain amount of legroom to review a play properly.
I travel, I read, I write, I have other lives. But when I have a camera, I know that's my country, my island.
If I haven't any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.
In every book I write, I try to name-check the most prominent influences, or the most prominent conscious influences.
I don't read much of what I write because I worry about unintentionally borrowing something.
I'm not the most talented writer in the world. I know that. But I also know that I'm disciplined, that I work my butt off, and that I make myself write as much as I can. Writer's block is a luxury I can't afford. I'm a professional writer, which means that I put my butt in the chair each day, and I write. Simple as that.
I like writing, but I write for self-improvement more than I do for money.
I'm one of those people that I make a song... then I write another song and then I'm like, 'But this song is so much better than this song,' and then I kind of ditch that song. It's a long process.
When I lecture, under almost all circumstances, I write a new lecture for the occasion. It helps me think. It helps me make demands of myself that I would not otherwise make.
E-mail also changed things in that you don't have to write a full document to discuss something. You can just send an e-mail to a list.
Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.
Yeah, we went to England to do a show and I got off the plane and I couldn't write my name or hold my hand up.
I think probably you can either write for kids, or you can't. That ability to imaginatively be a child and see the world as a child and feel and think like a child - you either have that ability or you don't.
I write from what I take to be the realist's point of view, looking at life as it really is - or the way I see it to be.
I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary.
There is nothing else to do in Nashville except for write songs.
It usually takes me about three years to research and write one of my historical sagas; this is one reason why I take medieval mystery breaks, for they can be completed in only a year.
My brain is a big cluster of stuff. It moves quickly and loses focus quickly, so I need many projects to keep me stimulated - it's a luxury to be able to do lots of different things: style, write, present, DJ or just consult. It can't be any other way; I think I would shrivel up and fall asleep forever.
I know that there's a cultural expectation that women be nurturing, delicate flowers. And I am. So delicate. But that doesn't mean I can't write a good, gory murder scene.
I never set out to write prayers at all. But there was a span of time when I didn't find it easy to pray, but, when I went to write one of the things I had to write, a prayer would come.
I had, at a point in time, decided not to write on the corporate world. But if people expect me to set stories in a work environment, then why go away from it?
Before I was 12 years old, I had no interest in music; I was just into football. Then I heard Don McLean's 'Vincent' come on at the end of an episode of 'The Simpsons.' You know when you hear something and you don't understand why you like it, you just do? That's how I felt. I just thought, 'I want to be able to write songs like that.'
I don't see why a book shouldn't be intellectually sound, entertaining, and fun to read. Historians who write academic history, which is unreadable, are basically wasting their time.
When I was nine, the teacher asked us to write a piece about our village fete. He read mine in class. I was encouraged and continued. I even wanted to write my memoirs at the age of ten. At twelve I wrote poetry, mostly about friendship - 'Ode to Friendship.' Then my class wanted to make a film, and one little boy suggested that I write the script.
When you write songs for your best friends and maybe two other people to hear, and then realize that a million other people are going to hear them, it can be a bit worrying. You get concerned about what you might reveal.
I don't necessarily make much art myself, but after I wrote 'Warped Passages,' I was fortunate to get involved a little in the art world. I got invited to write a libretto for what we called a projective opera, and I also got invited to curate an art exhibit.
The radio has so many rules, and songs don't. You don't necessarily write to a rule book unless you're, like, just doing it professionally, which has never been my thing.
When I'm driving the highway by myself is when I write best.
I write a lot of environmental stories.
Men are allowed to write songs about people and women are allowed to write songs about women.
