Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.
My entire adult life has been devoted to family and career, each adding to the other in many rewarding ways. I have never felt that I had to set a pattern for my writing and teaching.
Fantasy encompasses a wide, wide spectrum of writing. We have beast fables, we have gothics, we have tales of vampires and werewolves, and we have sword and sorcery; we have epics from Homer, and there is just so much out there that we put under the umbrella of 'fantasy.'
As I grew up, I read and loved many fairy-tale retellings and began to think about writing my own reimagining of 'Rapunzel.'
If you look at most women's writing, women writers will describe women differently from the way male writers describe women. The details that go into a woman writer's description of a female character are, perhaps, a little more judgmental. They're looking for certain things, because they know what women do to look a certain way.
Tweeting about objects means I don't need to bid on them, which is a blessing. Buying something is a way of saying, 'Look at this!' So is tweeting. So, I guess, is writing fiction.
It did not prepare me for writing or 'Power of Attorney.' However, what it did is that it forced me out of the DA's office. I stopped getting that county check.
As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very talented at talking about what I do as a writer.
When I'm writing, I'm creating the story and its character with words. I'm thinking about what the pictures will be like, but I never begin to sketch. The pictures are all in my head.
I've always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I've written three or four that have never been produced.
My first book was signed up when I was 13, and I've been writing ever since. But penning the 'Halo' series has been so much more rewarding than I ever expected. For three years, from the age of 16 to 19, I poured my life, my experiences, and a love for the supernatural that dates back to childhood into these books.
In the early '90s, I was hired to write educational dramas about HIV and AIDS in the shantytowns. I did that for two and a half years, and then I was hired on other films. When 'Tsotsi' presented itself, I thought, 'This is not a world I grew up in, but I've spent a great deal of time writing about it and researching it in my past.'
I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.
This doctrine of Christ and of the apostles, from which the true faith of the primitive church was received, the apostles at first delivered orally, without writing, but later, not by any human counsel but by the will of God, they handed it on in the Scriptures.
If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface.
I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.
Nobody's going to write a book about me, because nobody's going to find anything worth writing a book about.
I started writing when I was 9 years old. I was like this weird kid who would just stay in my room, typing little funny magazines and drawing comic strips.
If I had to write long-form stuff with descriptions of rooms, it would be so boring for me. I like writing dialogue and jokes and situational stuff.
I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer.
We all have these tendencies in us that could go this way or that. I think that's the real key in writing. To look at a character without judgment.
I have written my whole life. I remember writing as a small child.
What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids, ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food.
When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part.
A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.
I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.
Writing is like playing golf - you have to keep working at your swing.
Writing and telling are almost the same, the way I do it.
I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.
Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.
I had casually rented an apartment that cost $75 a month because I expected my writing to pay my way.
Not being able to read and write music is not the same as being illiterate in speech and writing.
Since the age of 11, I have loved writing poems and fragments from my life.
You have to be very brave in that first writing session.
In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.
I never considered I might make a career out of writing as I was going to school, so when I did turn my attentions that way, I was very ill prepared, having only what I read as a guide, and no formal training whatsoever. I credit that very ignorance with a great deal of my success.
