My mother taught me how to write.
Starting a new job can be nerve-racking , but it's also exciting. You're embarking on a new future, positioning yourself to write a fresh story on a clean slate.
Obituaries were among my favorite to write because they have elements no other news stories have - a story from start to finish with a proper conclusion.
I work via the high-tension-wire method, which is maybe going for long periods without writing while the tension builds up - when am I going to write this, am I going to be able to write this, what is this image about - and I'm thinking about it all the time, but I'm not really inside it, inside the writing.
I hate YouTube sometimes because people put up things of mine that were never meant for consumption and also because of some of the comments people write about my videos.
Write for yourself. That's it. And write every day.
I don't have a special place or ritual for writing songs, basically I write songs whenever an idea hits me, in my hotel room, on the road, in the plane.
And sometimes I sit down to write, because that is what I like to do more and more in the future.
I write narrative nonfiction, creating lively scenes through action and the use of quotes from firsthand accounts, all based on rigorous research. If I say a character leaned against a fence on a windy day, than I have at least two sources to back up these details.
I wanted to go into the tropics and save animals - and write, of course.
When you talk or write or film, you work with the music inside you, the music that formed you. Different generations have different musics in them, so whatever they do, it's going to come out differently, and it will speak in beats of their own generation.
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.
But my point is these Civil War songs were gruesome. The hatred that's so bad in this country today, and for the past 10 or 15 years, bad as it is, is nothing compared to the kind of things people would write down and sing back in the Civil War.
I dread naming pieces of music because being instrumental, most of the time the songs that I write are instrumental, I want the listener to make up their own story as to what it is and get the emotion pure without using logic.
Because I've lived a risky and unconventional life, I don't often struggle for subjects to write about.
Reading is No. 1 - I have to read, or I can't write.
I didn't want to write a book that suggested that magic good/technology bad.
You cannot prove this in real time, but when economists 20 years from now write a book on the recovery, it may well be entitled, 'It could have been much better.'
She had the kids during the day and I would have them at night. That way they were never alone. I would put the kids to bed, and then I had nothing to do and nobody to talk to, so I would write.
I've always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people.
My mind is stuffed with quotes. Lines, couplets, paragraphs, stanzas; Bessie Smith, Stevie Smith, Tin Pan Alley, rock and roll. They tease or lead or hurl me into a dream space of jostling languages that I need to bask in each day in order to write.
I decided to write category romance as I'd recently discovered them, and enjoyed them.
I'm a person who does not like to journal; I don't like to sit down and write... I don't even like sending emails.
It was my great problem to solve: how to write a book, you know. And after you write one, you have to write another to prove to yourself you can do it again.
No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.
I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.
When you write something it has to hit the level that you accept as being good.
My general working style is to write everything first with pencil and paper, sitting beside a big wastebasket. Then I use Emacs to enter the text into my machine.
I write through improvisation. I never card out a movie. You know how people will outline or card? I don't do that. I tend to start with an idea and go.
When it comes to lyrics, I just write down a lot of things, and only a very tiny fraction of it, I think, is any good.
When I sit down to write a song, there is no filter. I'm not trying to write for anyone or anything specifically. It's just trying to capture a little piece of your soul - even if it's a really ugly part.
When I start getting close to the end of a novel, something registers in the back of my mind for the next novel, so that I usually don't write, or take notes. And I certainly don't begin. I just allow things to percolate for a while.
I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice.
Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential.
For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.
