After decades spent in rewrite rooms surrounded by other shouting writers, I discovered that I work best alone. I like being in charge of my time, working out the problems according to my own rhythms and being able to nap.
Our culture places a very high value on storytelling, and the more that Catholic writers are able to master that craft, the more they can speak to the culture, the more powerful their stories will be.
I grew up reading the 'Village Voice' and wanting to be one of these multidisciplinary music writers, film writers, book writers. And I lucked out getting a job at the 'Voice' right after college.
People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.
I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it's poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.
There are some writers who feel they are elected by God. I am not. I am elected by the devil - this is clear.
Led by a new generation of edgy sportswriters like Lipsyte, we found new purpose in the great issues of the day - race, equal opportunity, drugs, and labor disputes. We became personality journalists, medical writers, and business reporters.
I don't have a normal job, so I really appreciate having friends who are writers and artists. It's fun to have a group of people you can call in the middle of the day to go for a hike.
The cool thing about 'Transparent' is that the show is funny but not like a sitcom is funny. It all comes down to the writing... The writers on that show are so good that you don't have to worry about anything. There are so many things that can go wrong making a TV show or a movie, but if the writing's good, that's, like, 95 percent of it.
Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work.
I tell people all the time that producers, writers, and directors really don't know what they want until it walks into the room - you have to show them what they want. Everyone is rooting for you when you walk into the room. Everyone wants you to be good because it means their day is over!
Some writers, I'm told, look for their characters' surnames in telephone directories. I don't - it seems too obvious. Or too deliberate: if you go looking for names, you're bound to find them, of course, but I've always had a superstitious hunch that the names you find by accident are always going to be better and more satisfying somehow.
Some writers like to go around talking about what they do all the time. I don't.
For some reason, it seems like pop writers, it's like they just get worse or something over time. And then you're really jealous of movie directors whose careers seem to grow and they'll be 70 years old and still doing these incredible jobs. I'm going to reverse that, I hope.
'The Iliad' includes some snappy sports reporting, and writers ever since have been probing athletes for signifiers, for metaphor amped by grit under pressure.
While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.
Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
I think fan fiction is the way most writers start, and the same goes for music and design.
I don't really believe in closure. That's something that writers talk about or people wished that they had.
Some of the hip-hop stuff people get into is exciting, because there's a passion and there's something to explain to a more mainstream audience, so you get these passionate writers who want to express their love for rap and hip-hop, which is cool.
The sad thing is that, for many writers of fantasy fiction, the inclusion of magic seems to mean that logical ramifications and real-world laws both go out the window.
Directing myself definitely made me a better actor. And, you know, I think actors have the best track record when they turn to directing. Writers, too. I knew how to direct actors because I've been there and I know what I like.
I like writers who seem to write because they have to. You get the feeling of this burning desire to tell a story. I find it in Peter Carey, Nicola Barker, Ali Smith and David Foster Wallace.
I have been fighting writing songs for a long time. People keep telling me I should write, and other writers have offered to write with me, and to be honest, it's not something I've ever really had a passion for - plus I wasn't sure I had the talent to do it!
I feel I should defer to the writers and the directors because they're the ones who have the complete vision. They see things through from the beginning to the end. I'm responsible for one small part, so my scope is much more limited than theirs.
Writers generally get into writing because they want to write, not because they want to be independent publishers, and you can't really fault someone for saying, 'What I'm doing right now works, so there's no reason to change it.'
I think most fiction writers naturally start by writing short stories, but some of us don't. When I first started writing, I just started writing a novel. It's a hard way to learn to write. I don't recommend it to my students, but it just happens that way for some of us.
When I was a graduate student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for fiction writing, I felt both coveted and hated. My white classmates never failed to remind me that I was more fortunate than they were at this particular juncture in American literature.
I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.
I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. 'The Gathering' did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.
'Wings' was a blessing, but it was also very difficult. Whenever you do situation comedy, no matter how excellent the execution - and we had a great cast and great writers - but the format is somewhat limited.
In fiction, there happens to be a long history of creative engagement with marginality, with the very human components of society that others don't want to think about, from writers such as Dostoyevsky, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud to Genet and Sarrazin and right on up to Norman Mailer.
How many writers in history have ever been as famous as Stephen King? He casts an awfully long shadow.
Mostly I'm writing about people, so I feel constrained to take with me my view of people, my curiosity about how people choose the things they do and why they come to certain decisions in a certain fashion and all the things that drive most writers.
Code writers, they are my idols.
I have been fortunate to have worked with immensely talented writers and directors who have had faith in me. There's been very little hard work but a lot of learning. I have learnt from each of my characters, and I think that's rather amazing.
