Well, if I am not vulgar, neither is my book. I wrote myself. Suggestiveness is always vulgar. But truth never. My book is not even remotely suggestive. I call things by their names. That is all.
I am a former newspaper reporter turned church secretary turned vampire novelist. I wrote my first complete novel, 'Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs,' at night while I was working as the receptionist for a Baptist church. That was an interesting conversation with the pastor.
Millions of Americans cannot tell you who lived at Mount Vernon or who wrote the Declaration of Independence - let alone the Emancipation Proclamation. But they know that to be 'a Benedict Arnold' is to be a traitor of the deepest dye - someone who coldly betrays not only a sacred cause but every moral scruple along the way.
You know, if I wrote the arrangements two years from now, they would probably be a lot slicker.
'Marvin Gaye' came about my first day in L.A. It was kind of crazy that that's my first song that I wrote and it blew up that much. What's crazy is the next day I wrote 'See You Again,' so that's pretty interesting. I was trying to prove myself as a songwriter.
I wrote the very first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, The World Well Lost and Affair With a Green Monkey.
My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do.
I wrote my first books when I was single and then I got married and then had a kid and there were different things happening in my life.
I did not feel 'evil' when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.
It is such a crazy idea that maybe something that I wrote or something that I put on a record would affect people at all.
As far as songwriting, I'm not sure if they wrote all of their own stuff, but I love the Dixie Chicks.
As always, I wrote songs. Some people cook or play sports. This is what I love to do. Sometimes I can't express myself that well in talk, so I write songs.
From the late '70s to the early '90s, I wrote anything anybody would pay me for. This ranged from articles on how to clean a longhorn cow's skull for living-room decoration to manuals on elementary math instruction on the Apple II... to a slew of software reviews and application articles done for the computer press.
I heard about the book and I said, 'Oh my god, I've got to read this book,' and I didn't know that a white woman wrote it. Nobody said that to me, they just said, 'The Help - Oh my god, you've got to read it.' Everyone failed to mention it was a white woman, I think, because nobody really wants to talk about race.
One of the things that made Epic strong when I wrote the original code was that it never occurred to me to do anything other than put the patient at the center. I developed a clinical system at a time when the health care world had pretty much only billing and lab systems available.
The first song that I wrote was when I was with The Del Rios. I was like 14 years old but I was always putting my thoughts down on paper even before then because it was like an escape - a way of unleashing all the stuff.
I love the BlackBerry. I'm on it all the time. I literally wrote my whole book, 'Unwrap Your Sweet Life,' on the BlackBerry while I was working out on the StairMill. So many people tease me about having a BlackBerry, but I meet a lot of people who still use one. Obama has a BlackBerry!
I wrote for years before I was ever published, and I don't think I could ever stop. That said, I was also a veterinarian before I sold my first book, and I still volunteer my time to help with animal welfare causes. So that is a career I would be happy to return to - while still secretly writing strange stories back in my doctor's office.
I was asked by a group to write a song on the theme of brotherhood. This was before women's liberation, when brotherhood meant men and women both, so I wrote the song. Since I had always been very fond of the Passion Chorale, I wrote words to that great piece.
Somebody wrote a script around us, but Dustin Abraham came with the best one.
When the Transportation Security Administration adopted body scanners at airports, activists wrote the Fourth Amendment on their underwear in metallic paint readable by the new devices.
For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.
'Each One Lost' I wrote the day after I got home. My week in Afghanistan was a very short trip, but it was a powerful experience.
I wrote all the lyrics on 'Good Vibrations' and most of them in 'Kokomo.' 'Kokomo' was extremely popular and fun to sing - it's probably one of the bigger sing-along songs in our show. But then 'Help Me Rhonda,' 'Surfin' USA' and 'California Girls' and 'I Get Around' and 'Fun, Fun, Fun' are great songs as well.
The first record I bought was a Carl Perkins record, because I saw him at The Festival at Sandpoint, Idaho. I loved Elvis and I found out that he wrote 'Blue Suede Shoes'... so connecting that experience of going to see him play was pretty awesome. That's when I realised I wanted to play guitar.
My husband, Nick Chiles and I wrote a number of relationship books together, and what we found was that women were thirsty to hear directly from men.
'Hill St.' was very good, but it was very impersonal work for me. I wrote about that place as if I was a visitor. It wasn't what my life was like. It was a great place to learn the craft of how to shape a scene, but I wanted a chance to write about more personal themes and obsessions.
I wrote 'Mr. In-Between' very quickly when I was about 23. I wrote the penultimate chapter, then realised I'd done something which was written to the best of my abilities. I panicked. I hesitated to finish the final chapter and went into withdrawal for three years. I decided to pick it up again after I went drinking with author Tim Binding.
I wrote a lot. I was in programs for drawing when I was a kid.
I've always known when I start a story what the last line is. It's always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don't know how it's going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever.
I try to gauge whether a girl likes me before I make a move. I would write a page-long note to a girl. If she wrote a whole page back, I knew she liked me, too. If she wrote back like two words, then I figured I'd move on.
I wrote it three times - with a Thesaurus.
When it began I wrote this passionate letter to people I knew, studio members, of course, and other people with whom we have worked over the years and I said come and teach our students.
You made a lot of mistakes, and you wrote a lot of crap. But it was all part of the learning process.
I wrote 'Science For Her!' because I found normal, manly science textbooks to be too intense for my small size-0 brain, and I found normal science textbooks to have covers too heavy for my dainty size-0/size-2-with-bloat hands.
My poems - I don't even like the sound of that, in a way. Not that anyone else wrote them. But we know that only people who are really close to us care about our personal experience.
