As a writer, as much as I try, I can't stop writing female characters. They have so much more to offer; they have to wear so many different hats. There's so much wonderful gray matter in a female's life that it just makes for a stronger character.
I have some realistic humility which comes from my first career as a writer. I wrote for other people for ten years. I saw some incredible egos not based on any reality. They were great when they were on top and awful when they weren't. I learned a lot about how to treat people.
Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time.
From 1961 to 1964, I was fortunate enough to work at a think tank in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. As a writer and editor, I reported in a publication about the thinkers. Our offices were in a former mansion; I worked in what had been the ballroom. As I sat typing my copy, I imagined the dancers waltzing.
At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture.
In that sense, film is superior, but the difficulty is your lack of control as a writer.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.
I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish.
Years ago a friend and fellow writer, Nick Antosca, once made a remark about it being best not to threaten, but to simply act. An effective way of going about things, I think.
He would catapult you forward, and that was his intention with the Jazz Messengers. He would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.
A writer needs a life of introspection.
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.
The digital revolution has wrest a little control away from corporate publishers and white, male, middle-aged critics, but the financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession.
Songwriting is something I really need to work on. I don't have very many songs but I really love it. I would love to be a great song writer some day.
I get really excited if I think I'm going to introduce somebody to a writer they haven't found before and I think they'll love. My favorite books to get as gifts are any that the giver is messianic about.
One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need.
If a lecturer, he wishes to be heard; if a writer, to be read. He always hopes for a public beyond that of the long-suffering wife.
I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.
I don't call myself a writer.
Surgeons are not technicians; they're not mechanics. They're artists. I see patterns where not many other people see patterns. ...I think that's what made me a good surgeon, and now, that's what's making me a good writer.
Writing is as big a part of my career as acting is, financially and time wise. So, yeah, I love it. That's all I wanted to do since I was young was be a writer. So that and acting are the two most important aspects of my career.
Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.
I am not a consecutive writer.
The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.
In Sydney, I gave what was billed as a masterclass to bright students of writing at the University of Sydney. But the term 'masterclass' was possibly over-egging the pudding. All I could do was pass on some lessons from my own life, and the most obvious is that if you want to be a writer, you must first have been a reader.
My strength as a TV writer was my total lack of interest in television.
I grew up. I began to think the United States had some problems that really required the help of artistic people to solve. And I gave myself permission to be a writer instead of a civil servant.
I am deeply in tune with my heart and core, and it's made me a better writer, artist, and most of all woman. It's made me more myself.
As a writer, you always try to imagine, 'What if I were in a situation like this? How would I react?'
As a writer, you rely on whatever makes you up as a person, whether those things are twisted and nasty or otherwise.
I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.
A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.
While I would agree that I write about serious subjects, and that they're not necessarily the most pleasant subjects or even the most pleasant people, as a writer I just think about the humorous aspects of these things - that's what keeps me going when I'm writing a story.
I think every professor and writer is in some way an exhibitionist because his or her normal activity is a theatrical one. When you give a lesson the situation is the same as writing a book. You have to capture the attention, the complicity of your audience.
