Comedy writing is the hardest, and yet there's so much that's relatable in it.
The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply.
My brother says that I was writing songs about fate while he was off playing soccer. Now I tell him he's 33 and being a professional while I'm playing soccer with my friends. Ha!
Kids think you just sit down and start writing. I always tell them you never do that.
When I'm writing for certain instruments, you want to write within what you know about that instrument but also challenge the player. Something like 'Aheym' is very virtuosic - but because I have a history of performing music, I don't like unplayable music.
I've been writing about growing old for some time, really from the beginning of my career. It's something I'm apparently hung up about and now that I am old, hopefully I speak about it with some authority.
I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.
'Writing' always means 'not writing' to me because I will do anything to put it off. I think this is mainly because writing anything down and then handing it over to a third party - especially in comedy - is such an exposing act that you naturally want to delay the process.
My passion is writing, but it is also a fight because I still see home as a woman's duty.
If things are going well I can easily spend twelve hours a day writing, but not writing writing, just thinking and revising and taking a comma out and putting it back in.
Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.
I've tried writing with music on, but I find it distracting.
I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager... and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that.
Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.
We're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.
Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.
I tend to forget what I'm doing will ever be read while I'm writing it, and just get on with the task at hand.
I will always treasure the privilege of writing the 'Sports of The Times' column.
A feeling for history is almost an essential for writing and appreciating good science fiction, for sensing the connections between the past and future that run through our present.
I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.
I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.
The reason I started writing movies was because I kept getting parts that I just kind of stepped into. I didn't have to do a lot of work and I ended up getting sort of bored.
You could do a 'Les Mis'-type musical about Hamilton, but it would have to be 12 hours long, because the amount of words on the bars when you're writing a typical song - that's maybe got 10 words per line.
Writing for adults and writing for young people is really not that different. As a reporter, I have always tried to write as clearly and simply as possible. I like clean, unadorned writing. So writing for a younger audience was largely an exercise in making my prose even more clear and direct, and in avoiding complicated digressions.
I am always urging my students to honor their writing practice, to set up a schedule.
I rent a Jacobean-fronted hunting lodge in Hampshire from the National Trust and like to go there as much as possible. I've grown to love it so much, especially when writing my memoirs there at weekends.
Life isn't so complicated for children. They have more time to think about the really important things. That's why I occasionally moralise in my children's books in a way I wouldn't dare when writing for adults.
I've never really seen too much difference between writing or making visual art or designing furniture or clothing. It's still my brain - I'm just using different parts of it for different things.
My natural tendency is to write about zombie bunnies, but one of my first writing teachers got incorporated into my writing superego, and I keep hearing his admonition to make things feel more real the weirder they get.
Personal relationships are usually my biggest inspirations for writing my songs. The best way for me to write a song is to visualise the story in my head, and I start humming a melody, and before you know it, a song is born.
I just hate sitting and writing - I had to do that in school. Plus, I have terrible handwriting.
My mother often mailed me articles from 'Reader's Digest' about advances in DNA chemistry. No matter how I tried to explain it to her, she never grasped the concept that I could have been writing those articles, that something I had invented made most of those DNA discoveries possible.
Unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Wolfe, I don't like proper dress while working. I like writing in pajama-like clothing, which eases and relaxes me and allows me to connect with the decidedly improper.
Writing about joyful experiences for just three days can improve people's moods and decrease their visits to health centers a full three months later.
I write for the love of writing. If I never published another book, I would still be writing stories.
My days are filled with writing, reading, and being a mom. Some days, I get to visit schools around the country and talk about what it's like to be a writer. I often feel like I'm pretending, because it's still hard for me to believe it when I see someone holding a book that I've written.
