If I did anything 'next', I would do writing.
Journalism is a team sport. Writing novels is golf: it's you and the ball.
I freely admit that I took great license in writing 'The Dark Queen,' more so than my other historical romance novels. This is largely because I viewed the book as a fantasy novel as much as an historical. I do feel that writers should strive for as much accuracy as possible but, in the end, remember that we are writing fiction.
I was 37 years old. I wanted to support myself by writing.
I think e-mail is kind of a cheap way to communicate. It's a lazy way of writing a letter, you know. I write a letter every now and then, you know, pick out somebody and drop them a line, because I always like receiving letters.
You're writing your life as you go - the question becomes, how do you want to write your life?
When I was writing my dissertation, I wrote about Freud and the process of sublimation, which is when you learn to stop breast-feeding, or stop going to the toilet whenever you want to. It's about learning to repress a desire for instant gratification.
For some reason, the concept of writing with swing chords was intimidating.
My sister Kim is like Lucille Ball. She's magical in terms of her performance and her writing.
I love producing, writing. I rarely write with other writers unless I have a real great respect for them. Like Burt Bacharach, or Carole Sager, or Stevie Wonder. Somebody like Smokey - like that. Otherwise, I choose to write alone.
I love writing comedy.
The fun thing about writing a book with multiple paths and multiple endings is you really get to explore the characters and figure out their different fates.
In my own life I studied music, not creative writing; I see a novel as music - an opening as an overture, themes and subplots as lines in a fugue. The chance to write a novel about a musician boxed in by all kinds of limitations but who plays out his ultimate struggle for freedom at the piano was irresistible.
I feel like the books were just written like a movie. You read it and you can just kind of see everything. Before I went in to read with the director, I read the first book and I loved it. I didn't realize how good the writing was. And then I went in and read with Gary Ross, and that was it.
Writing can be a very solitary business. It's you sat at a desk typing words into a computer. It can get lonely sometimes and lots of writers live quite isolated lives.
I enjoy singing the songs a certain way, but I don't even know how the writing even began. To me, it's work that is kind of invisible; it's a weird kind of work to have because you're not working, but it's not not work. Formulating your thoughts and making a melody that's catchy enough for people to listen to what you're saying is really hard!
Got good news and bad news for you, Mr. President. The good news is that Chief Justice John Roberts just saved your legacy and, perhaps, your presidency by writing for the Supreme Court majority to rule health care reform constitutional.
I had never thought about writing a novel. But I had two young kids, and I realized that if I could write a novel, I could work at home.
If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.
Well, I am becoming doddering and old but I have - I'm writing two books a year now. It's like 220,000 words or something like finished, and, honest to God, I can't do that. I really do need the help of, you know, other people working with me.
The more you read, the better you are at writing, no matter what you're writing. A lot of songwriters miss that and don't see the connection there, and I've always felt like you're more able to communicate if you have a bigger toolbox to work with.
There is an honourable tradition in British public life that those charged with authority at the top of an organisation should accept responsibility for what happens in that organisation. I am therefore writing to the prime minister today to tender my resignation as chairman of the BBC.
The journalism school helped me develop writing skills, and I had been enjoying cartooning from a very young age. My interest in puppetry, however, came much later.
If things are going well, if the writing's coming along, I jump out of bed happy. And if the previous day has been bad, I get out of bed disgruntled.
A book is not an example of 'women's writing' simply because it is written by a woman. Writing may become 'women's writing' when it could not have been written by a man.
I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
My own way of writing is very meditated and, despite my reputation, rather slow-moving. So I do spend a good deal of time contemplating endings. The final ending is usually arrived at simply by intuition.
I don't wake up in the morning and say, 'Jeez, I feel great today. I think I'll write a song.' I mean, anything is more interesting to me than writing a song. It's like, 'I think I'd like to write a song... No, I guess I better go feed the cat first.' You know what I mean? It's like pulling teeth. I don't enjoy it a bit.
Once I had all the facts in, I found I didn't have the immoral courage to pull the caper. So I wrote it as a story. As a teenager, I didn't have any skills for writing as such, so it came out in 1500 words.
I don't think that anyone was trying to keep me from writing the first album. It's just when you're on 'American Idol' or a TV show like that, you wanna capitalize on that momentum, and you want to use that to your advantage, obviously, so the best way to do that is to get the music out as fast as possible. And there's no time to create, really.
I want to be an author/director and I'm writing my second book now and I want to make a movie of it, and I hope I get to do this for the rest of my life.
They're hit writers. They're gonna write me a hit whether I wanted it or not you know? I could have put out a single a year ago with the Neptunes and maybe been writing now on top but that was not the path that I chose.
I may write about place and displacement, but what I'm really writing about is dispersion, evasion, ambivalence: not so much a subject as a move in everything I write.
Life throws up enough road blocks to keep you from writing; you can't be adding to them yourself by saying you can only write in one specific place. I'm in New York half the time and Texas half the time, and I work wherever - in my computer bag I have some foam ear plugs that I can put in.
Since the moment I could hold a pencil, I have spent nearly all day every day writing. And there is not an age group that I have not written for. You can read me from birth 'til death.
The writing comes first for me. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not the Internet or signings or merchandise, or 'the career.' Everything begins and ends with the writing for me, and I build my entire life around sitting my butt down 365 days a year.
