I'm the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that's horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.
It would probably be better if I got involved in fewer things just because I'd have more time to write for my own purposes... But if somebody calls you up with a really cool project, it's hard to just say 'no' because you don't feel like working.
It's very much a piece of myself when I write a song. I don't mean to say it's very personal, like the lyrics mean something personal to me. When I write a song, that's my taste in music - my taste in chord progressions and melodies.
I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.
Whether or not you discover your talents and passions is partly a matter of opportunity. If you've never been sailing, or picked up an instrument, or tried to teach or to write fiction, how would you know if you had a talent for these things?
I mean, if you lined up 100 writers, you'd get 100 different ways in which they write. There's no right way or wrong way to do it; it's whatever your process is.
I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.
Everything I write is about big feelings. What I care about is trying to be brave enough to feel how you feel and to be emotionally true.
As an actor, we always want people to write about us and talk about us. And when they are actually writing, then we say, 'Don't write about this.' I am an actor; I am a public property. I don't own myself; public owns me.
Growing up as a singer, and a cast member, and now as an adult, a songwriter, I get the luxury of choosing the kinds of songs that I want to sing, because I'll write, you know, hundreds of songs. Even though only 12 appear on the album. That's 12 that I've chosen to sing of my catalog.
To be honest, I would never have imagined myself acting on a sitcom that I didn't write.
The novels I planned to write were never going to be funny books about Jews. They were going to be country house books. Only later on could I write what I knew I was best at writing about.
I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head.
Ed Sheeran wrote his songs, so I wanted to write my own songs.
I think that we're all, as human beings, so limited. If we want to write about ourselves, that's fairly easy. And if we write about our friends or our families, we can do that. But if we want to project ourselves somewhere beyond our personal experience, we're going to fail unless we get that experience or we borrow it from others.
I try to write the kind of books I like to read.
There is a difference between a great producer and somebody who is a big advocate of your music. Just because you're a big advocate for a band doesn't mean you need to be in the studio with them, and at the same time - we don't need to get into this conversation - you can write a hit, but it might not hit.
I write what I write.
When I write for 'n+1,' I begin by doing a lot of reading, to try to convince myself I'm not stupid. Then I scribble down a paragraph here, a paragraph there, when a notion strikes. Then I see if I can arrange those notions in a way that yields an argument.
A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history.
In a serious relationship, I will definitely write music about a guy. I'm totally into mix tapes and I'm all about small little things. I'll drop by their door and just leave a gift or come over if they're sick and make them chicken noodle soup and rent a DVD and play board games. I think those little things mean a lot to someone.
Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.
I write with a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint on nine-by-seven bound notebooks made by a Canadian company called Blueline. After I do a few drafts, I type up the poem on a Macintosh G3 and then send it out the door.
A good ground rule for writing in any genre is, start with a form, then undermine its confidence in itself. Ask what it's afraid of, what it's trying to hide - then write that.
You are the plays you write. How on earth could you write them otherwise? They're projections of your own predilections.
My mom was dying for me to write a book, she was my biggest advocate.
In hip-hop, I wasn't very focused on delivering a message. It was just a string of lines that didn't connect. What I wanted to do is write stories... and affect someone's emotions with that song. I think as a soul singer, I'm able to accomplish that.
I believe that, in an ideal world, writers would feel free to write what matters to them without having to consider success, failure, the market, etc.
I think that what I do, in terms of how I craft my words rhetorically, is fairly simple stuff. I don't mean that to denigrate myself. I mean that in the sense of, when I write, the person that I keep in mind is my mother-in-law.
I write about the things I feel strongly about.
I'm a genre writer - I chose to be one, I ended up one, I still am one, and I'm not writing transgressive, genre-blurring fiction. I write 'core SF' - it may occasionally incorporate horror or noir tropes, but it's not pretending to be anything other than what it is.
You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.
I guess I'm not that aware of such a big fan base. I have a few core people who write me no matter what I'm doing, but I hardly have sacks of mail being dropped on my door!
I know, if I am playing well, I can be as good as anyone, and I want to show people who write you off and forget about you.
I was classically trained. But more than just the fact that I play violin, there's a lot of classical elements in the way I write, in the way I hear chords. A lot of times, I think of my songs as a symphony made out of electronics rather than instruments. And I love to do orchestral arrangements of my songs after they're done.
My recommendation for SEO is very simple. It's Write Good Stuff. In my mind, Google is in the business of finding good stuff. It has thousands of the smartest people in the world, spending billions of dollars to find the good stuff. All you have to do is write the good stuff; you don't need to trick it.
