I must confess I love female writers: Jane Austen, Isak Dinesen, Colette, Willa Cather, Dawn Powell, Joan Didion. I grew up on the Bronte sisters, and Daphne du Maurier.
I block out a good amount of time - could be 6 or 8 months - and I just write. I do a lot of traveling, and I do a lot of co-writing with different writers just to start getting ideas out and kind of get a little bit of direction as far as where I'm going to go with the album.
The writers who inspire me most are all women: Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, Margaret Mitchell and Emily and Charlotte Bronte. As for contemporary novels, one of my favourites is 'Everyone Brave is Forgiven' by Chris Cleave. It's the sort of book to read if you've fallen out of love with reading - it reminds you just how brilliant novels can be.
Our job as writers, as far as I can tell, is to attempt to express what seems inexpressible.
Writers are not always right however, but then again, I've been on shows where the actors have complete control and change everything and it's terrible.
I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.
Our principal writers have nearly all been fortunate in escaping regular education.
Having judged a few competitions, it's clear that novelists are often the laziest short story writers.
All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.
I'm so thrilled to have won the RITA. The award is particularly special because it is given by other romance authors. It's deeply rewarding and not a little humbling to be honored by such a talented tribe of writers.
Like most writers, I write about what has happened to me as that involves the minimum amount of research.
Writers don't have to keep themselves honest. They have to keep themselves accurate.
Everything starts and ends with the song, and working with writers and really learning their process and craft was an invaluable experience.
I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.
The original Dean Martin Comedy Hour handed me some hysterical sketches. I've got highlights on tons of these variety shows, given to me by their great writers. I'd love to be doing all that again.
I had to produce a complete page - or two or three - in one day. I took a lot of pride in my work, and I hated to do a mediocre job. Evidently, some of the writers enjoyed my work best of all for that very reason.
There's a certain possessiveness of writers sometimes.
Around 2008 when the writers' strike happened, all my stuff was getting stuck in development, and I thought, 'I'm going to try my hand at horror because I always loved it as a kid.'
Who knew Rob Lowe was funny? On 'Parks and Rec,' we've got some of the funniest comedy writers, some of the funniest comedians in the world working there. And if anything, we don't just effuse to one another and be like, 'Oh, Rob Lowe's really funny,' if he wasn't.
I do write about race a lot, but I don't think writers - of any shade or background or whatever - have to write about certain subjects.
I think some people think that writers read and read and read, get the information, and then write. That's not how it works. Often, you write yourself into a dark place where you don't know what you need to know, so you go get the information.
I have in the past acquired a reputation for concocting non-existent writers and unwritten volumes.
I know there are writers who like to say that every novel is hard, and it doesn't get easier. That may be the case, and I've only written two. But the first, to me, was characterized by an enduring oscillation between perseverance and a profound doubt.
My school is very good and quite understanding and know I have to take time off for interviews or writers' festivals.
In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.
What we need is more women writers, writing for older women. There are some actresses who have production companies and create their own material, and I truly admire that.
I remember Tim telling me that he had an idea for a musical and he said to me that he was hoping that ABBA would be writing the music, which I thought was a pretty wild idea because they were obviously known very much as pop writers.
The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.
My goal is to write one book of fiction, and that's all I want to do. It takes so much time, and I don't really have enough time. But I admire writers so much.
There's sort of a very symbiotic thing that happens on good TV shows with great writers, which is that they start to sort of embrace who the actors are and try to make the roles more specific to what they bring and what they can do.
Well, you know, writers just suck up new experiences - we're just like the vacuum cleaners of newness.
The Pakistani writers are addressing change and what's happening today in the world. There is something completely contemporary in this writing.
As so many writers know, the experience of creating an imaginary world is closer to dreaming than it is to normal, grit-your-teeth work. It's preconscious rather than conscious. Ideas fall into your head, and the book writes you, rather than the other way around.
There's something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them 'budding' or 'promising', when in fact they're peaking.
The really successful work in England tends to be working-class writers telling working-class stories. The film industry has been slow to wake up to that, for a variety of reasons. It still shocks me how few films are written or made in England about working-class life, given that those are the people who go to movies.
There are distinctions between Indian and Pakistani writers.
