When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.
I can shoot off my big mouth and write my shows and run my shows, and I can recognize how lucky I am because my position is rare and my position is privileged.
I write a story as if it were a letter to someone and essentially, that's what you do.
Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.
Typically, I would run away from conflict and write about it - that was easier than staying and dealing face-to-face with humans; that's terrifying for me.
Honestly, I envy painters, who can have a masterpiece in one morning. Or musicians, who can write something in 30 minutes and arrange it in an hour, sometimes. 'Cause with this, with writing, you can occasionally feel like a caveman, like you've been working with pitch and tar on this brush.
I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.
I can plunk out enough chords to write a song, but I'm completely afraid to play guitar in front of other people. It's a fear of failure, I guess.
The only reason I would write a break-up song is because my own problem of allowing myself to relate to people.
I think the best fiction is a form of psychological suspense, even though I don't really write in that idiom.
Talking about how I might write the next book is like talking about whether or not to have sex. Any dithering ruins it.
At one point I would read nothing that was not by the great American Jews - Saul Bellow, Philip Roth - which had a disastrous effect of making me think I needed to write the next great Jewish American novel. As a ginger-haired child in the West of Ireland, that didn't work out very well, as you can imagine.
Most people write a lot of autobiography, but when I came to write autobiography I discovered that nothing interesting had ever happened to me. So I had to take the situation and invent stories to go with it.
I don't read many popular histories like the ones I write. The building blocks for my research are scholarly monographs, and the inspiration for my storytelling style are folks like Chekhov.
I write in the mornings, two or three hours every day, and then at least four times a week I play in a duplicate game at a bridge club. I try to go to tournaments three, four, or five times a year.
I think it's very important to write a demythologized woman character. My characters are flawed. They are no better than they should be.
Honestly, I still don't use my computer. My kids use the computer more than I do! I understand that a lot of people are into it, and I have days where I write and stuff, but it's really not for me. It's not my thing.
You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.
The fact that I get to write and direct my own personal story is an amazing thing.
I think escapism is something artists write about pretty frequently - it's something everyone can relate to, the concept of wanting something more, wanting to find solace, wanting to have something better.
I believe that tracks speak to me. Some tracks make me write certain music or make me feel sad or inspire me to write a sad love song. Each track has its feeling to me.
I write to try to find out who I am. One of my main themes is manliness. I think I'm trying to figure out what manliness really is.
Over the years, a number of people have asked me why I tend to write at this great length. I've put some thought into the answer, and it can be boiled down one word: consequences. Well, maybe two words: consequences and characters. Or perhaps, consequences, characters, and the subconscious mind - above all the subconscious mind.
One mistake with beginners in writing is, that they think it important to spin out something long. It is a great deal better not to write more than a page or two, unless you have something to say, and can write it correctly.
I have this belief that if you have an idea, and you have to write it down to remember it, then it can't be a great idea.
The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along.
Colombia changed the way I write and sing.
I wish that I had known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn't have found it so frightening to write.
The more clearly you write, the more easily and surely you will be understood.
The multilevel, the conscious and the unconscious, is natural when I write scripts, when I come up with ideas and stories.
I normally write in the first person, and my narrators are as real to me as any of the people I have worked with. They live and breathe in my imagination.
Here's something I probably shouldn't be saying: I never listen to my soundtrack albums because I can't stand it. It's just stereo. When I write, I write in surround. My life is in surround.
I used to write out of angst. My writing was quite miserable, quite angry, even when it was funny. It was based on this sadness and tired emotional disdain for the world.
I do not really write for children: I write only for me and for the few people I hope to please, and I write for the story.
Honestly, most of the stuff I made for 'TV on the Radio,' I write in the studio.
You've got to make a decision when you write about your life, and I decided I was going to be honest, and some of those things will be embarrassing.
