I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don't know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.
Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.
Acting and making music are quite complementary. Acting relies on someone else's writing and direction; writing music or lyrics doesn't. But they are both creative and personal in completely different ways.
It was writing about music for NPR - connecting with music fans and experiencing a sense of community - that made me want to write songs again. I began to feel I was in my head too much about music, too analytical.
High-profile columnists should remember they are in a privileged position. Writing isn't a dreadfully specific skill - it's taught to millions via our schooling system. And opinions? Well, I've yet to meet people without opinions.
I'm just like anybody else: I have stuff to do in the day, whether that's writing a song or recording a song. I try to treat everything I do as just work.
For me, naming bands was the forerunner to really writing lyrics, because I work off titles.
We still play Foreigner songs. I play the songs that I was involved in writing.
If I'm writing strictly for others, how does that show what I'm experiencing or thinking? I just got to a point where I realized I could be as personal as I wanted to be and people could relate to those situations if they so choose.
I have a very large shoebox overflowing with lyrics I've been writing and collecting since my teen years and into my late 20s, with lyrics from all walks of my life. Darkness, being in love, being heartbroken, finding yourself... and lyrics that I've been sitting on for, like, seven years, that I haven't done anything with.
I opted for a freelance writing career. I was lucky enough to have the means to do it.
Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.
I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.
I really absolutely loved writing my first book.
I believe that reading widely is the best preparation for writing.
During these continued tough economic times, writing a sensible, fair budget that provides real opportunities for Washington families, workers and businesses is always a challenge.
The thing you can't let go of is gravity. The reality of gravity in writing. If someone says something really mean in a sitcom, and the next wave isn't a reaction to the reality of that, you start losing relatability. In a lot of romantic comedies, they throw out the rules of life.
The Holocaust is a central event in many people's lives, but it also has become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it. Besides, in Israel, everyone carries a biography deep inside him.
This motion-picture muddle had distracted me from my writing.
I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe - and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it.
I think the musicians I play with solo do a certain thing that the musicians we play with with the Indigo Girls don't do. It's just a different thing. And it sort of steers my writing in some ways.
No one should ever be hurt or killed for saying, writing or drawing anything.
It's about a young man who has climbed to fame and he discovers that his writing and the relationship with his wife are really more important for him than anything else.
Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
You start realizing that good prose is crunchy. There's texture in your mouth as you say it. You realize bad writing, bland writing, has no texture, no taste, no corners in your mouth. I'm a great believer in reading aloud.
When I was younger, I suppose I was interested in checking out as much about writing as I could: bad, weird, irritating, even things not-to-my-taste. Now I am less open. I will decide after a few pages if I want to stay in the world of the book, and if I don't, I put it down. I have less time left.
Politics disappears; it vanishes. What remains constant is human life. So I try to develop a perspective in my writing where politics is just one of the pieces of furniture in this furnished world. It is not the purpose. It is not the goal.
I didn't know that there were many rules in music when I first started writing.
I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.
To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.
The benefit of this kind of outlining is that you discover a story's flaws before you invest a lot of time writing the first draft, and it's almost impossible to get stuck at a difficult chapter, because you've already done the work to push through those kinds of blocks.
Activism is very seductive, and writing is painful and hard. It's very scary to have a death threat living over your head. Activism is very sustaining. But I don't view myself as a political person. I'm just someone who desperately wants to stay alive.
Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.
Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.
I was in 'Goodwin Games,' which was canceled, and a few other things, so I kind of swore off television unless I was writing or producing it.
I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.
