One of the great things about writing middle-grade books is that it's really a nice break, when you're writing super intense stuff like 'Coldtown', to be able to write something a little lighter - calm down and do something different.
Writing is very cathartic for me.
I've been writing since I was 7, but before that, I was orally making stories.
I'm not driven. I love writing. My imagination is always working. I write when I have time, and life allows me the time.
What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.
The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.
I always had a passion for writing, but I always visualized other artist singing my lyrics, I never visualized myself.
All that time that we spend tweeting our thoughts and emotions to our next of kin, we could be writing the great American novel, starting a business, or just living.
Writing my novel 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North,' I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did not begin with the first beating or murder on that grim line of horror in 1943.
Because my writing time has always been very limited, I try to be very choosy about which stories I work on. There are many ideas that would make interesting stories - too many - so it's important to be ruthless and say no to most of them.
I've had writing sessions with people, but I've never had one where you're just there, and you start making a song, and then it's too good to be true that something really cool will come out of this.
My final historical romance came out December 2005. While I enjoyed writing medieval romances, I was also dying to write something with more edge.
Being a writer involves writing. You've got to commit to sitting down and writing instead of Xbox or Netflix.
I intentionally approached each story in 'Killing and Dying' in a different way, and that includes the writing process.
I love writing, and I love the solitude of the writing, in that you're just sitting there creating something from nothing, or a new story for characters you love and care about.
There's a lot of essay writing that could pass for journalism and journalism that could pass for essay. Some of it is just taxonomy.
It may sound very strange, but I love the freedom that writing a novel gives me. It is an unhindered experience. If I come after a bad day, I can decide that my protagonist will die on page 100 of my novel in a 350-page story.
I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing.
The skill set that lets you be alone in your pyjamas for two years writing a book is not the same skill set that lets you go on television shows like 'The View' or 'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.'
The dirty little secret about adventure writing is that something has to go wrong.
There's a point at which writing a book, or a long article, begins to feel like mental labor, and it's too painful to connect in the world in any real way mid-process. The only way to survive is to write until it is all said and done.
Sometimes you go for weeks without writing successfully, and you don't feel like a writer anymore. When friends ask me how my week was or how I'm doing, I think back on it, and I've just been by myself. Like, I'm just a sketch.
I've thought about writing, but it hasn't happened yet. It's like schoolwork - you start doing your revisions two nights before you're compelled to turn it in.
When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With a real historical figure you have to be fair, and this is not an obligation you have in dealing with your own creations, so it is quite different.
I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books. While I'm writing a book, which I probably do two out of every three years, it's like having a second job. I squeeze in the hours when I can.
Looking back at it now, it's almost overwhelming, the amount of work that went into writing 'Shine', and to come up with the ideas that we're doing now.
I'm really just trying... to write what feels true to me. I don't think about a lofty responsibility. I think I'd be paralyzed by that. Like any of my male colleagues, I'm writing the stories that interest me in a way that feels true to me.
I began writing 'Matterhorn' in 1975 and for more than 30 years I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript.
I painted myself into a corner by writing a whole book on this one period. The summer of 1927 came to an end, but nothing else did - all of these peoples' lives went on.
In writing lyrics - well, for me, anyway - it's about getting into character, you know? 'Who is writing this?' In the case of the original 'Thick As A Brick,' supposedly a precocious, very young child who's fantasizing about his future and the context of all the confusing elements to which school boys are subjected at that time.
All writing is presumption, of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being.
Since childhood, I wrote a lot of fiction, a lot of stories, but I most loved writing essays.
My secret is simple. I have a very short attention span, and writing lots of things fast appeases that very attention span.
I've been singing and writing songs only a little longer than acting. I really enjoy both.
Language and written language are the only real way we have to see inside another person's thoughts and to know what makes another person human. Without writing, we just wouldn't have that kind of access.
I never really considered writing something that was nonfiction.
