A lot of the time, I write in the third person, but I'm mostly describing my own ordeals. When those unsettled struggles prey on your mind, you become haunted. To get free, you must defeat your ghosts.
Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.
I lost my brother in a car wreck when I was 14 years old. When I decided I wanted to be a country singer, my dad always told me, 'Son, you should write a song about your brother.'
When we're falling in love or out of it, that's when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I'm very happy to do that.
As a writer, I was shaped by a desire to write for black people. That things were not being represented. That was my motivating force. That it has become what it has become is shocking to me. I just wanted to be able to take care of my kids.
What I think was a really lucky coincidence was that a lot of the themes of 'Okja' are things I write about a lot: cognitive dissonance and corporate greed and also the internal politics of fringe groups.
We write to taste life twice: in the moment and in retrospection.
Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn't the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn't have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I'd got now for an 'adult' DW.
I don't eat fast food often, but I love tacos. I could write prophetically about how perfect the taco is.
I'm very finicky about when I'm in the right mood to write. So most days, I find some excuse not to do anything.
I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.
I think people are confusing the right to write with the right to be published.
With 'Torches,' I wanted to make a great pop record; I wanted every song to be exciting, not to have too much space, no long pieces of music without vocals. I kind of wanted to write the perfect pop album.
I started out when I was 29 - too young to write novels. I was broke. I was on unemployment insurance. I was supposed to be writing a Ph.D. dissertation, so I had a typewriter and a lot of paper.
Write your goals down in detail and read your list of goals every day. Some goals may entail a list of shorter goals. Losing a lot of weight, for example, should include mini-goals, such as 10-pound milestones. This will keep your subconscious mind focused on what you want step by step.
I write books that will make 10 or 12 hours disappear, and hopefully they'll resonate with you for a few days, where you'll remember the characters and the story. That suits me fine; I am happy with that.
When I was a little kid, before I learned how to write, I would tell stories.
Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.
There's nothing in the recent past I want to write about.
When you write a script, you always think about what your heart is asking.
I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.
Take your time, however long the book needs. I've seen a lot of promising careers go into decline because writers succumbed to the pressure to write faster than was comfortable for them or the story.
My mother always helped me because she was kind of a research fanatic. When she would write a screenplay, there would be so much research all over the walls. And so when I started working as an actress, I would do the same thing. She instilled in me a love of taking everything very seriously. It didn't matter what it was.
I write a lot of rhymes, but I don't really end up using them a lot of times, and I end up just freestyling. I like to write music, though, more than I like to freestyle, to be honest.
I write poetry, and I put it to a beat - I mean, that's what they call rap.
When you are interviewing someone, don't just write down what he says. Ask yourself: Does this guy remind you of someone? What does the room feel like? Notice smells, voice inflection, neighborhoods you pass through. Be a cinematographer.
You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn't be when it is literally your job.
I find my readers to be very smart, and there is no reason to write dumb.
I would love to dive into an indie film based on the streets of East Los Angeles where I grew up. If that doesn't come my way soon, I think I just might have to write it myself.
I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.
Do I feel that white directors have to tell only white stories? No. Do I feel that black filmmakers should only tell stories about black people? No. If we say that, then that means Asian people cannot write about anybody but Asians. I don't think a woman should only write about women.
I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character that has lived for 4,000 years, and I wanted to know what was its birth, what is its mind, its personality, its psyche?
It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care.
When you write a story, it just flows and you don't control it. It's subconscious.
Being able to write creatively or read creative fiction is the best way to exercise your imagination.
I like to write books and cause trouble.
