That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.
One of the disadvantages of poetry over popular music is that if you write a pop song, it naturally gets into people's heads as they listen in the car. You don't have to memorize a Paul Simon song; it's just in your head, and you can sing along. With a poem, you have to will yourself to memorize it.
And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.
You have your brains, but it's energy and desire that make you write a book.
I love to eat, I love to feed people, and I'm a great cook. I joked with my friends that I wanted to write a book where desserts had to be extensively researched, since I have a terrible sweet tooth. My particular downfall is cake.
I think humor can be an effective way of getting the point across, but there are definitely times where I just write very earnestly.
Catwoman has an awesome, iconic personality. It's a blast to write her. You get her; she's an archetype. You can just kind of put on the cat-suit.
Writing the past is never a neutral act. Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons... provided we can live with the reasons. What we want is a narrative, not a log; a tale, not a trial. This is why most people write memoirs using the conventions not of history, but of fiction.
People always say I write a lot of pop culture references. Can somebody please count the pop culture references in 'Firefly?' Because I don't know how to put this to you, but there was one. I referenced The Beatles in the pilot.
Comedians have to write to survive because you don't get cast for your beauty.
I knew I had to write about Canada. I just could not find in literature any examples of the immigrant experience that I've had.
How a piece ends is very important to me. It's the last chance to leave an impression with the reader, the last shot at 'nailing' it. I love to write ending lines; usually, I know them first and write toward them, but if I knew how they came to me, I wouldn't tell.
I came from a poor family in Coney Island. I learned to write by reading the 'Post.' This was my education.
I like it to be quiet, and it usually occurs in the morning. There are three or four places in my house where I can write and I like to keep moving around. The moment I find myself falling into a necessary routine, I change it. I'd rather not accumulate superstitions.
The first book I sat down to write was an historical romance. It was really bad and thankfully no one ever saw it.
I think it's hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.
People probably have different philosophies about this, but I think that when you're first shaping the play and trying to find a character, the initial actors that develop it end up imprinting on it - you hear their voices; you hear their rhythms. You can't help but to begin to write toward them during the rehearsal process.
I don't write with a machine. I write with a pen and a paper, which is what is most comfortable for me.
If sitcoms were easy to write, there'd be a lot of good ones, and there aren't.
It's so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I've never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.
Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.
I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.
I dream crazy vivid dreams. Like, entire movies. And sometimes I write songs about them.
If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.
Each time, I think I'm never going to write another book. It never gets easier.
For a novelist, no matter what, it's a complete work, even if it's not published. But if you write a screenplay, and it's not performed, then it's a sad and frustrating experience.
No two dramatists think or write alike. Ten thousand playwrights can take the same premise, as they have done since Shakespeare, and not one play will resemble the other except in the premise. Your knowledge, your understanding of human nature, and your imagination will take care of that.
I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.
I try and write satire that's well-intentioned. But those intentions have to be hidden. It can't be completely clear, and that's what makes it comedy.
It's actually deeply satisfying to write a story out in full.
Can you write 200 words a day? 100? 50? In six months, 50 words a day is 9,000 words. That's 2-3 short stories. If you did 200 words every day, in three months that's 36,000 words. That's half a short novel.
I'd always had a hankering to write some old-school sword and sorcery. And there certainly are advantages to that particular form - for one thing, you're able to go all-out on the imaginative front, with a lot less concern for the usual unities of time and space and character.
Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.
History is my passion. So I write what I love to read. I find that if I combine history with a strong, sensual romance, it is like a one-two punch. The reader doesn't want the history without the romance, and of course the heavier the history, the more it has to be leavened with a sensual, all-consuming love story.
I love the fact that you collaborate with your readers when you write a book.
To be honest, the biggest reason I write music and became a musician was to create the amount of joy that I felt about music to anyone else. To me, that's a job well done.
