I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue.
My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader.
It was relatively easy to write 'The Cave of Lost Souls', though, because it came to me one night in a dream. I remember waking up and having this idea for a complete story - from start to finish - in my head, so I jotted it down, then later began writing the thing.
I'm not sure I'd write a good cookbook, but I might make a good cooking show.
I just sing and write songs and wear what I want. It's quite a good job really. If I wanted to I suppose I could become more of a fashion icon, but singing is my thing.
Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.
It's really a lot easier to write about things that are problematic. Who wants to hear how happy you are?
I wanted to write songs that would play themselves on stage, songs that sweep you through their current.
I started to write a new editor not too long ago and had it about half done after two days.
I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was going to be 'important.' The novel had taken me 12-and-a-half years to write, and after being with the book for so long, I had no real perspective on the merits or demerits of what I had written. I hoped it was good, but feared that it wasn't.
I cannot write music. I cannot play the piano.
I write as if I were drunk. It is a process of intuition rather than placing myself above my story like a puppeteer pulling strings. For me, it's a scary, chaotic process over which I have little control. Words demand other words, characters resist me.
I'm always shy and timid when I write in front of people.
I write about my feelings, things that happen in my life and experiences.
I myself get nervous when I write something on social media. I make sure I don't write anything wrong.
I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.
I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.
I always swore I would never write a book. But I read Clare Balding's and it was really interesting and so prettily written and lovely and not too revealing. I went to her book launch and met her editor who said 'why don't you think about it? You can do it however you want, based on your characters or you.'
Keep it in tune with the times, but don't write with the specific purpose of trying to create a hit. If you're doing it strictly to make money, you're crazy. There are easier ways to make money.
I write for somebody who has my own limitations. My reader has a certain difficulty with concentrating, which in my case comes from being a film viewer.
I write screenplays in the middle of the night.
There were times that we'd be in the locker room there before everyone else, and a guy would walk in, say, 'Is this the Kliq locker room?' So we'd draw with a sharpie on the back of a program and write 'Kliq locker room'. I can promise you that none of those signs were ever on WWE letterhead.
I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing.
In my standup work, I always do these characters, older people who are just off to the side. It's easier to write a story about the guy who made it to the top, but the middle is so much more interesting, so much more murky.
So, immediately after that, I got a commission to write a piece for chamber orchestra, and in working on the material I discovered it was possible to incorporate the Buddhist teachings into the music, so that's what I started to do.
You write about what you know, and you write about what you want to know.
I think no artist can claim to have any access to the truth, or an authentic version of an event. But obviously they have slightly better means at their disposal because they have their art to energize whatever it is they're trying to write about. They have music.
Writing is work. It takes a lot of contemplation, concentration, and out-and-out sweat. People tend to romanticize it, that somehow your work appears by benefit of some mystical external force. In reality, to be a writer, you have to sit down and write. It's work, and often it's hard work.
'The Indian Runner' was easy. It had been incubating in me for eight years, and by the time I sat down to write the thing, I had all the pictures in my head.
I can't write my life story without Emmitt and Troy. They can't write their life stories without me. We're tied together forever. This is a day to remember for the rest of our lives.
When I write I find a quiet place.
As I write, I try to be the character.
Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.
I write box notes for Kino International, which specializes in distributing foreign films.
Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.
If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again,'
