English of course is your major tool, but it is not nearly so important as other aspects of writing for example you have to have some natural ability you can't buy it no one puts it there you're born with it.
My expectations for myself were never high. I had a very unusual way of writing songs and of thinking about music. I wasn't at all like Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel. I was completely different - I didn't have a David Geffen at my side.
I've always wanted to have a book published - it was a dream of mine, but the thought of actually writing a book made me feel really sick.
Trying to get my music performed live by bar bands was a self defeating experience. It really just distracted me from what I should've been doing all along, writing and recording.
Me as an artist, I'm more notorious for writing songs that celebrate women, songs that are all about the positive element of the immensely confusing creature that is woman.
And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing.
I had always written. I had written stories and poems. Then I started writing plays.
I try not to think too much about an audience when I'm writing the first draft of a book - at that stage, the prospect of anyone reading what I've written would be enough to scare me into setting my laptop on fire.
Yeah, I came in at the end of the Notorious album, played on about five tracks and then we went on a tour. Then we did another album, Big Thing, and then we started writing songs together in 1989.
The act of writing surprises me all the time. A miraculous thing happens when you have an idea and you want to convert it into words... and then you start to create a work of art, and that's another miracle, and it remains mysterious to the writer, or to this writer anyway.
When I'm writing something, I try not to get analytical about it as I'm doing it, as I'm writing it.
The Internet is a tool, a technology, and we like to say that it has all of these properties, but really, it's just a place where our writing is.
When I'm writing a song, it's just me and the songwriters. Then when the song is done, there are publishers that hear it, then people in my management, then my wife and my boys and my friends, and if they're all lovin' it, it's kind of withstanding all the criticism I need.
So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother's house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write.
Creativity was definitely a big part of our household, and I remember always writing stories and being encouraged to be creative.
No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.
I try to sort of make myself emotional in the moment when I'm writing, and that always translates better. When I'm writing, I can't do abstract.
In recent years, I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television, to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business.
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.
I think there's a joy to be had in taking readers where they just don't want to go. If you are writing a properly realist novel, then don't blink. Why not see something for what it is and render it truthfully? I find it a good way of going about writing - not to blink.
When I started writing this, I found that I simply couldn't take fantasy seriously, so it became humorous, and continued from there.
I can only do really serious writing for a couple of hours. And then I always go on a walk. I do a one-to-two-hour walk; I don't go running or hard hiking.
My first writing job was with a company called TheatreworksUSA.
Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
Just writing and being in the studio was like therapy for me.
I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
I get drunk writing words. I don't drink or do drugs, but I get so carried away with writing that I get inebriated from it.
I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing.
Even at my biggest, I want to be writing for other artists. Even at my peak - the highest I can be as an artist - I always want to be keeping my creative juices flowing, keeping money in the bank, putting my intellectual property out there.
I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career.
Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
I had a blast writing the Ranger in 'The Great Dinosaur Rush' for the Moonstone collection. The story turned out to be twice as long as it was supposed to be, but I was having fun. I even showed the Ranger in his 'old prospector' disguise, and I had some nice exchanges between the Ranger and Tonto.
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
I like writing, and I enjoy it. It's painful. You can't get around the pain of writing. I'm still trying to balance on what I think is my creative habit. It varies, but I do know that I need to continue. It helps me with my acting, and the writing helps me be invested in a different way.
When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.
