When I was first approached about doing an autobiography, I said, 'absolutely not.' But when I sat down, memories came pouring out. It wrote very quickly - I think there was an emotional impulse, because once I started in, the story itself carried me along. It was a very intense writing period and took a year and change to finish.
I was writing a scene where a guy was choking another guy to death. You can go online and type 'chokeholds' and watch scenes where martial artists choke each other out. You can hear what noises they make when they go unconscious, see how their bodies flop and everything. YouTube is amazing for the more detailed stuff.
I use my fiction to explore my own unconscious issues. I usually don't even know what's going on with me until I'm writing. That doesn't mean my books are autobiographical.
The process of writing a novel is getting to know more about the novel until you know everything about it. And it's been described as a kind of dreamlike state where you're letting the novel make its own shape, and you're putting into it the pleasure of creation, which is intoxicating.
I certainly was performing before my writing was published, because I was performing when I was very young. And the thing is I'm very comfortable on stage, so a large portion of my act did come from ad-libs.
Writing is reporting what we saw after the vision has left us. It is catching the fish which the tide has left far up on our shores in the low and depressed places.
I came from a very musical family, so I grew up singing karaoke with the family. My family said 'do this' and brought me to singing lessons. I had always been writing poems and songs.
Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.
Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.
I work a lot of things out on stage nowadays rather than writing them in big blocks.
I make up names for people all the time - it's part of writing. Very often, the name comes with the character, along with of a sense of who they are and what they do.
Unlike motor sport, I didn't get into music for the live performances. I like writing and studio work and seeing how a song can come to life.
I know some people are like, 'I'm depressed, and I'm a struggling artist,' and that really works for some people, but that doesn't work for me. I have to be really happy, even when I'm writing my depressing songs; I have to come through that stage before I can write.
Sarah Palin - now don't laugh - is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she's 'collaborating' on a book. What an embarrassment! It's one of these 'I told you,' books that jocks do.
If you are willing to take the trip through 'Analogue,' you'll be rewarded with some of the best writing in gaming today and a look into the future of what kind of meaningful stories video games are capable of telling.
Writing for the page is only one form of writing for the eye. Wherever solemn inscriptions are put up in public places, there is a sense that the site and the occasion demand a form of writing which goes beyond plain informative prose. Each word is so valued that the letters forming it are seen as objects of solemn beauty.
I managed to fit most of the writing to evenings and weekends, and my wife has been very supportive.
If you want more diversity in the industry, you need diverse people writing scripts and developing them.
I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.
Since 1988, I have been writing steadily. I did decide a couple of years or so ago to scale back to writing one book a year - a sort of semi-retirement. But I never did have much success with that plan!
I've been writing songs all my life. My mom said I wrote my first song when I was two.
More than half of my former students teach - elementary and high school, community college and university. I taught them to be passionate about literature and writing, and to attempt to translate that passion to their own students. They are rookie teachers, most likely to be laid off and not rehired, even though they are passionate.
I was never writing for commercial success. It's nice that it has come, but it is not important.
When I write, I feel that I'm writing with my intellect. When I paint, I think it's some other force making me paint. I - as I wrote in my novel 'My Name is Red' - watch with amazement what my hand is doing on the paper, what kind of line, what kind of strange, beautiful thing it's doing in spite of my will, so to speak.
My husband, a.k.a. Swede, and I both come from athletic backgrounds, so once we identified the goal - get book published - we attacked it. At any given time, I would have my writing out in 25 various forms - either contests, mentoring critiques, agent/publisher queries, etc.
If you realize early what your influence is, you can have a better understanding of what you are writing about.
Writing a novel, when it's all going well, it's wonderful. You're lost in the world, and you have a relationship with your own mind. Also, as a novelist, you don't have to yell at anyone. But being an executive producer of a TV show, all you have is people coming at you with questions, and you're making decisions, decisions, decisions.
Sometimes I see people writing the most ridiculous things about me.
The only way you can acquire anything is by writing a cheque. At the end of the day you're writing a personal cheque, which tends to concentrate the mind.
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.
Writing tips are like mini skirts. Sometimes they fit perfectly, sometimes they make you cry, and sometimes you can reuse the material and sew yourself a pillow or something.
When I'm writing books, something weird happens; and the result is the books contain a large amount of what you could call 'supernaturalism.' As a writer, I find I need that to explain the world I'm writing about.
Not to say people shouldn't get rich from art. I adore the alchemy wherein artists who cast a complex spell make rich people give them their money. (Just writing it makes me cackle.) But too many artists have been making money without magic.
Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.
I have to be involved. Whether it's me writing by myself or with other people, I definitely want to have my hand in the creative process. That's part of why I got into music in the first place.
I just want to keep writing music.
