Everything around a writer, or musician in the record business, probably everything in all the United States or in all of western civilization, is about competition.
But if you have a point of view and you're an artist or a writer, it's kind of crazy to not take advantage of that, especially if you can do something that's entertaining as well. I've done a number of things like that over the years.
And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.
The biggest mistake is to assume that another writer's successful strategy will work for you, too. Publishers' marketers - and even freelance publicists who cost mega bucks - tend to do the same basic things for all books.
As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.
When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn't think to myself, 'I'm going to model myself on Agatha Christie' or 'I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition'.
I know one writer who has been subscribing authors without their permission and sending out what she thinks are helpful advice sheets, but they come off as if she's a know-it-all. She thinks she's marketing herself and her work. All she's really doing is turning readers off.
I am a comic writer, which means I get to slay the dragons, and shoot the bull.
I'm a performer, comedian, entertainer, writer and director.
I turned down twelve films last year... Huge money films, but I had no respect for the writer or the work.
I'm open to reading almost anything - fiction, nonfiction - as long as I know from the first sentence or two that this is a voice I want to listen to for a good long while. It has much to do with imagery and language, a particular perspective, the assured knowledge of the particular universe the writer has created.
Becoming a mother has helped make me a tougher, stronger writer.
There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to.
The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she doesn't have a personal point of view, it's impossible to be a creator.
But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.
I feel as if I became a documentary film-maker only because I had writer's block for four decades. There's no other good reason.
I have more to say as a writer than from behind a wok.
A non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about refining it. A work of non-fiction is not as difficult to write as a work of fiction, but it's not as satisfying in the end.
I wasn't trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn't have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.
Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
I'm a writer; I'm a producer. I've certainly spread myself over a lot of different careers.
Well, you just know, as a writer, I didn't really write one of the five best screenplays of the year. There were lots of brilliant screenplays; I was just one of the lucky ones who got nominated.
It is my desire to be a great writer. I know that I still have a mountain to climb to achieve that.
Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.
I live in the Village, and the way it's been, people sort of drop in on me and my husband. My husband is Robert Nemiroff, and he, too, is a writer.
Standing out as a writer today requires more than a bright idea and limpid prose. Authors need to become businesspeople as well.
Becoming a writer wasn't a choice (there would have been far more worthwhile things to do); it was the best, most fruitful way of being a bit ill.
As a writer, I try to do different things, but I'm not going to become a darker artist or turn into Radiohead overnight. I don't think that's my style.
I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.
A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.
The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.
If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.
To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of.
As a writer, as a creator, I'm giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain't got to pry beyond that.
I mean, the problem is, I think I'm a great writer.
