Life is God's novel. Let him write it.
The second album is the hardest to write. It's nothing like the first album.
I think after you write something and you're finished with it, there is a sense of loss. That this is a world I can't really re-enter the way that I could when I was working on it. The covers of the book close it to the writer.
It's kind of astonishing that people trust strangers because of words they write on computer screens.
I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.
With this first novel, I am just above the foothills, but I see the path to the top, and it is my desire to write compelling stories about everything that I find of interest.
There is no doubt that it is more difficult to read and more difficult to write but I still manage.
I would write plays for my grandmother, who was stone deaf, my mother and the dog, that was our audience.
Well I don't write, I attempt to scribble here and there. And no, nothing ever so grand as being published.
I've known since I was 12 that I wanted to write. My father was a teacher, and there were so many books around, it seemed natural to pick them up.
When I write, I tend to read it out loud to myself after. I'm a very uncomfortable reader, so it creates a distance between the text and me - it is a new way to see it.
I want to write songs and play them for people - live.
I have no ghost writers. I personally write every message and every piece of published mail.
I wrote in the book very specifically what I wanted to write about, period, and left it at.
I keep a journal and just kind of take notes. I don't really so much sit down and write songs - I just take a lot of notes, and sometimes I sit down and put them all together.
I was trying to write an autobiography using prints and patterns that reference emotional, psychological, and personal development in my work, as a person growing up, figuring out who I was. I used fabrics to stand in for occurrences.
I can't control what people think. I'm not trying to manipulate people's thoughts or sentiments. I write all the time. You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions. It's machine-like how things are run now in hip-hop, and my ambitions are different.
The whites, who are educated and civilized, swindle me, and I am not hard to swindle because I do not know how to read and write.
I don't outline or plan ahead when I write a novel. The more I know about what's going to happen, the less interesting it is to me; and if it's less interesting for me, it will be that way for the reader.
At the end of the day, I'm just trying to write a song that I like, that I'm not afraid to turn loose on the world. I do read a lot. I know a lot of people who read more, but I do try to keep a book in my hand most of the time, and I think that informs any kind of output that I'm going to have.
My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.
I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.
Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.
We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
Shy Carter helped me write 'One Call Away.' He is a brand new artist. I really want to help jumpstart his career because I think he's super-talented.
I get satisfaction when I write something I like, when I'm happy with it.
I write from my imagination, not from what I've read in books or seen on TV or to make money. I wrote from an idea I was passionate about.
I just feel like this guy who's visiting the music business over the weekend. Every time I write a song, I feel like it's never going to happen again.
People think that because I write about India I must be trying to portray India in a way.
I mean there are tons of reasons. Well first of all. I write my own record. I don't take other people's materials. And I have a job which is being Willa Ford on top of getting back in the studio and writing and recording.
You write a hit the same way you write a flop.
In grammar school I read 'Act One' by Moss Hart, and being a playwright struck me as the most magical and romantic career anyone could have... But I never did write a play.
I started trying to write when I was in second or third grade.
Between each album I try to gain a new insight that I didn't have before and perhaps write a song about something that I've written about before, but from a fresh viewpoint.
For some reason when I write in cursive, it's easier and flows better for me to read that when I print.
If, in the schools, the classical language would no longer be taught, whom could we entrust with the writing of memorials, documents, letters and notes in the public service? How could we possibly assign important offices and heavy responsibilities to someone who cannot even write fluently?
