I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.
I write in character a lot.
A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.
I have a spot on the horizon that I'm trying to hit: To write and direct adult dramedies. First of all, there's really not a big market for them. Second of all, it's like cracking a diamond. You've got to do it right.
I've always kind of wrote when I wanted to. Once I get the idea in my head and get it outlined out, I usually just sit and write until it's done.
I was a hired drummer for 3 Doors; there wasn't an opportunity for me to write.
I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age - 11 or 12 - but I don't think I ever thought I would write historical fiction. I never thought I might write academic history because I simply wasn't good enough!
After I recovered from 'Lioness', I wanted to write something about animals because I really like mythical creatures, especially dragons. At 12, I was one of those semi-recluses who did better with animals than people. Out of that, came the character, Daine, who could communicate with animals.
My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers.
The funny thing is that I write and I act a lot about being Jewish, but I don't really think about it as a regular person.
Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all the way through. If I'm reviewing the book, I have to write the review before I start reading any other book. I especially hate it when the phone rings and interrupts my train of thought.
To write a story about New York that only deals with people in your age and socioeconomic bracket, that feels dishonest to me. So much of New York comes from everyone bumping into each other.
I did write more mainstream stuff with DK. But you could always tell the records that I wrote in contrast with everybody else's because the format was a bit different. The harmonies were used in a different type of way. Way more metaphors in the mix.
There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell.
I wake up fairly early every day, by 8, for sure. Sunday is a lighter writing day than the weekdays, but I still wake up and write for about an hour, beginning right around 8. I definitely have coffee first, and then I start writing. I do think it's kind of hard to get the right level of concentration without coffee.
If Beethoven could write his 'Eroica Symphony' stone deaf, then William Wyler can do a musical.
I could learn how to press 'Record' on a tape recorder and write for a newspaper or a magazine.
Latinos that are in the industry writing and producing, they can't be afraid to go out there and say, 'I want my lead to be Latino. And I want to talk about this, I wanna write about that.' And Latinos as a whole, as a people in America, need to go out and support.
Accepting that part of the process of writing is deleting a lot of what you write is soothing, at least to me.
At a certain point in the writing of any book, you become absolutely certain that it's terrible and is only getting more terrible with every word you write. This is normal. You just have to keep going, push your way through, and have faith that, through practice and experience and determination, you will get to the end.
I've always had the wish, the nostalgia to be able to write detective novels. At heart, the principal themes of detective novels are close to the things that obsess me: disappearance, the problems of identity, amnesia, the return to an enigmatic past.
Ninety-five percent of all writers who write do not get published, but 100 percent of all writers write because they have a voice in their head. The vast majority of writers simply write because they have to.
I try to write from a point of view with my faith being always present and always there. don't want to write characters where everyone is saved. So this Madea character for me is not saved.
We write about things that we've done or things that have happened to people around us.
Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.
Think of all that hard work our founding fathers put in - the revolutionizing, the three-fifths compromising, having to write the entire Constitution with a quill - and yet they neglected to include the right to vote.
I enjoy looking back on my life. I'm thinking seriously about starting to write about it.
The least amount of info actors get, the better. Actors are always like, 'What is my motivation for this?' You didn't write it. Just say the lines.
I write almost everything, actually. Songs, poems, stories. And stories out of every genre, too.
I enjoy writing about people falling in love, probably because I think the first time you fall in love is the first time that you have to figure out how you're going to orient your life. What are you going to value? What's going to be most important to you? And I think that's really interesting to write about.
I'm as honest as I can possibly be when I write.
I tend to write three to four hours a day, depending - oftentimes very late at night. When I write on Twitter, I do other things: I'm working, grading, or reading, and I'm procrastinating, and I'll pop on Twitter and be like, 'Hey, what's up? Yogurt's delicious.'
I usually just write down what I'm doing and how I felt. How I felt if I'm skating fast, compared to if I'm skating slow or if I'm tired. I can always go back and look as a reference and see what I was doing. It's pretty much my life on ice.
I do not go down and sit in front of the computer and make myself write; that's not my style.
I write for kids because I think the most interesting (and most humorous) stories come from people's childhoods. When I was writing 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid,' I had a blast talking on the phone to my younger brother, Patrick, remembering all of the things that happened to our family when we were growing up.
'Write' is almost the wrong verb for what I do. I think 'compose' is more accurate because you're trying to make the sounds in your mind and in your voice. So I compose while I'm driving or in the shower.
