I wrote 'Happy Man' with a couple of boys of mine. I have been writing in Nashville for a long time. Of course I was writing songs back in Oklahoma when I was a kid.
Writing for children isn't easy. Kids will abandon a story that doesn't interest, enchant, delight, thrill, or terrify them. But when you can find a way into a young reader's imagination through something as simple as words on paper, well, there's nothing more satisfying.
I do believe that when I'm writing music, I get addicted to the music of the concept of what the outcome of the song is, or the passion behind the lyrics.
I'm clearly most well known for my music. Eventually, ultimately, I'll be writing books. I'm still writing articles now. I just consider myself a writer.
By embracing a label such as 'non-fiction,' the creative writing community has signaled to the world that what goes on in this genre is at best utilitarian and at worst an utter mystery. We have segregated the genre from art.
My life has two modes. One is sitting around writing and contemplating or building things. The other is execution mode. It takes a while to switch from one to the other.
Aim to write for an hour per day. I used to be a teacher, and an hour a day before school was all it took for me to write my first book. Don't get discouraged if a holiday or illness interrupts your writing habit. Just start it up again.
Octavia Butler was more interested in writing a good story than in worrying about where to slot it.
I still see life entirely through its Darwinian prism. I keep trying to shake off the aftereffects of writing 'The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead', and I find I can't.
There is no living African writer who has not had to, or will not have to, contend with Achebe's work. We are either resisting him - stylistically, politically, or culturally - or we are writing toward him.
We were given clear concrete tools. The course did a great job demystifying the art of fiction writing and fostering confidence. The instructor brought complex concepts down to earth. I will miss coming here every week.
My time in New York really clarified things for me. I thought, 'What could I do with my life that would give it meaning?' And writing was that for me.
I've always been a fan of just writing songs and making music.
My friends in Paris are writers, or something like that, whereas my friends in New York are doing cool stuff in finance and living very different lives. In writing, it's pretty solitary, so it doesn't really matter who's around.
Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.
One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.
Romanticizing the act of writing or any other art is not very helpful to the artist or the art. It's much better if one simply does.
I think of myself as a very ordinary person. I like writing about the juxtaposition between people: the beauty of them at times and then the banal, everyday context in which we find ourselves.
For me, the worst writing generally just 'flips' things: this person's really a traitor; it was all a dream; etc. Nothing is so ruinous as a forced 'twist,' I think.
Stephen King's 'On Writing' is probably the most useful writing book I've ever read.
You have to have passion for a subject to write about it. You can't expect your readers to feel any excitement if it's nothing but a boring writing exercise for you.
I started writing my own things when I was about 8.
Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself, and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.
Most of my interests in terms of writing are dark, so it's discordant how much I try to lock into the vibe of wherever I'm at. Inhabiting the life of the imagination is the nature of survival strategy - you build yourself little worlds to enjoy.
Writing is, by its nature, interior work. So being forced to be around people is a great gift for a novelist. You get to be reminded, daily, of how people think, how they speak, how they live; the things they worry about, the things they hope for, the things they fear.
I can't write a novel without first really doing reporting. I don't even call it research; it's reporting. That process is very important to the granularity of my writing. I have to know what the reality is so I can be more convincing in the writing.
I've got an original graphic novel called 'The Indian and the Bandit' that I'm writing with a childhood friend.
Sometimes I write less than I'd like but do research. Other times, editor's notes or a copy-edited manuscript or page proofs for a forthcoming novel mean that I need to put my attentions elsewhere for a day or two, but I always come back to writing.
It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.
I'd been writing stories since I was a child. I wrote little books for my mom and bound them myself with needle and thread. Mostly, they were about my pets.
Moderating a debate means spending more time with briefing books than with your children. It means writing and rewriting and rephrasing. It means finding a way to be alert enough to notice when your question goes unanswered and nimble enough to decide what you will do about that on the spot.
There's no getting around it: Writing is hard, while working with young performers is nearly always a joy.
Corporate career is like my wife, and writing is my girlfriend. My priority is the first but enjoy doing the second, as I have taken to writing as a stress-beater.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
The things you're passionate about and interested in, get experience with them by going deep on projects. I would encourage science projects, plays. Pursue science, math, writing, history - the 21st century demands a lot of cross-disciplinary thinking.
And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.
