It was writing about music for NPR - connecting with music fans and experiencing a sense of community - that made me want to write songs again. I began to feel I was in my head too much about music, too analytical.
I write a lot of music in my time off and I compose most of the songs on guitar. I've actually gone into the studio and recorded a few things, but it's tough trying to sell a song. It's all about finding that hook, that melody.
She told fortunes for a living. It's a wacky book and was great fun to write. It is very much a look at what life was like for women in Australia in the 1960's.
Since I can barely write two books a year the best solution seems to be co-author projects. My goal isn't to get another writer to clone me... it's more to produce a book that shares my vision of positive, fun entertainment.
If there's going to be another Misfits record, I'd probably have to write the stuff.
I write to understand as much as to be understood.
When I write in the studio, I tend to gravitate toward the ability to play really loud, aggressive, post-punk stuff, with big, heavy guitars and a big rock drum sound.
Trying to write music that's sensitive to 400 years ago takes a bit of madness, as it's such a long stretch of time.
I feel when a writer treats a character as 'precious,' the writer runs the risk of turning them into a comic book character. There's nothing wrong with comic book characters in comic books, but I don't write comic books.
I don't sit down to write a song, per se.
I keep a journal, and every day I write down one great play that I had that day. I don't write down any negatives.
I'm not musically inclined. It blows my mind that people can write music. I don't have that talent; I look up to the people that do.
It's not a very popular subject amongst my audience, who are by nature more internationalist, but I don't choose what to write about, I don't choose my subjects, they kind of choose me.
Events don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.
It takes a long, long time to write what I do write.
If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
It's hard for children's authors to be accepted when they try to write adult books. J.K. Rowling is the exception because people are so eager to read anything by her, but it took Judy Blume three or four tries before she had a success.
When I can write a song in a way where I feel like other people can relate to it, and I can take it past being cathartic just for me, that's when I know I can share it. Otherwise, I'd just feel like it's selfish.
I bought these pink sticker things... and I would write things on them, and I wrote, 'I will write an international smash,' and shortly after, it was when we did 'Monster,' and it was an international smash.
I don't ever write with a particular audience in mind. I just write books that please me.
I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.
I'm one of the writers that would die if I didn't say what I needed to say. For me, it's a matter of survival to write.
I don't think you could write fiction or create art unless you are sort of a positive person.
I didn't consciously make the decision to write an adult novel. I didn't think of it as my riposte to the YA genre.
Unfortunately, there's still a lot of beginning writers who think you can just write your first draft and hand it in.
I think e-mail is kind of a cheap way to communicate. It's a lazy way of writing a letter, you know. I write a letter every now and then, you know, pick out somebody and drop them a line, because I always like receiving letters.
You're writing your life as you go - the question becomes, how do you want to write your life?
'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' was surprisingly easy and fun to write because I was feeling such strong emotions.
If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance.
They believed that every man should know how to read and how to write, and should find out all that his capacity allowed him to comprehend. That is the glory of the Puritan fathers.
I love producing, writing. I rarely write with other writers unless I have a real great respect for them. Like Burt Bacharach, or Carole Sager, or Stevie Wonder. Somebody like Smokey - like that. Otherwise, I choose to write alone.
I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.
In my own life I studied music, not creative writing; I see a novel as music - an opening as an overture, themes and subplots as lines in a fugue. The chance to write a novel about a musician boxed in by all kinds of limitations but who plays out his ultimate struggle for freedom at the piano was irresistible.
There's nothing romantic about my work... I don't believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good.
If you want to get an email to Robert Redford, you send it to his assistant, and she prints it out. And then he will write you a letter, which is incredibly rare and incredibly classy. Unfortunately, I can't be that removed from technology.
When I write stuff and I help cast it, I turn away good people all the time. I may turn them down because this one's too tall and that one doesn't have a high enough voice or this one looks to old to match up with that one - there's a billion reasons not to hire somebody.
