When you want to transcribe an idea truthfully from the page to the screen, it is not necessarily best to be particularly literal about it. It can be hard to convince people, specifically writers, of that.
'Sleepless' was a script that had been written by three or four other writers before me, and it never really worked, but it had this amazing ending on the top of the Empire State Building that just worked, no matter what came before it.
The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to accept the power of the Church to set limiting points on thought.
What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.
Sometimes I say working on a story in a writers' room is like saying the same word over and over and over again until it doesn't make sense anymore. Like, you say it until you don't know what you're saying.
I thought that, post-apartheid, there would be absolutely no interest in South Africa. That has been both true and untrue. The major writers like Gordimer and Coetzee have produced major books. But some of the more minor writers have drifted away.
I hadn't ever worked with an 'editor' until I was 26 - although that could be partly chalked up to the MFA vs. NYC thing, where I came up through institutions that encouraged writers to write privately for a long, long time and not sully themselves with concerns about audience or the business side of writing.
I think most writers, in a sense, have this desire to disappear, to be absolutely anonymous, to be removed in some way: that comes out of the need to be a writer.
Someone once said that history has more imagination than all the scenario writers in the Pentagon, and we have a lot of scenario writers here. No one ever wrote a scenario for commercial airliners crashing into the World Trade Center.
Not that many people, even contemporary writers, write about right now.
Fiction writers tend to err either making people more than they are or less than they are. I'd rather err on the side of the former.
If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts.
Certain governments are suggesting that bloggers and tweeters aren't 'real' writers and, so, don't merit protection. A writer is anyone from a Nobel laureate to a debut blogger. They all get PEN's attention.
Let's face it, the great comedians now that are handicapped in the looks department are tremendous writers.
As writers, we don't just need to write about poverty or war or the immigrant experience.
I know a lot of writers who would much rather be writing the Great American Novel, but they've got bills to pay and alimony, and so they take a job at a less-than-reputable paper. You know, you do what you gotta do.
The single best piece of advice I give to aspiring writers is to always write about things that they know. I suggest that they write about people and places and events and conflicts they are familiar with. That way their writing will be real and hopefully readers will respond to it. I try to take my own advice.
Siva is one of the best writers in the industry, and 'Srimanthudu' is a great script.
I really do believe some people are naturally novelists and some people are short story writers. For me, when I was in middle school or high school, I started with novels.
I had the pleasure of working for Hart Hanson as the writers' assistant on the Fox show 'Bones.' He was always willing to take five minutes in the kitchen and answer questions I had about writing and the business. Looking back now, I realize he might have just been politely waiting for the coffee to brew.
I read somewhere that writers, as they get older, become more and more perfectionist. Which may be because they think more highly of themselves and they worry about their reputations. I think there's some truth to that.
This is the first lesson for writers - or anyone - who conducts interviews: If you want someone to talk, you've got to know how to listen. And good listening is a surprisingly active process. The interviewee is your focus of attention; you are there to hear what he says and thinks, exclusively.
I've had battles with writers who live in L.A. and were writing southern characters, because they felt like if they wrote 'Sugar' and 'Honey' at the end of every sentence, that would make it southern.
I think a lot of writers, male and female, write as if their parents were killed in a car accident when they were 2, and they have no one to hold accountable. And unfortunately, I don't have that. I have parents who I care about what they think.
What Bradbury had that most other science-fiction writers didn't have at that time was a love for beautiful language, evocative description, and haunting phrases that would stick with the reader.
I feel like, genre-wise, the walls are coming down in Nashville. There are so many writers who have moved to town from all walks of life. There's this immense respect for country, but there are pop songwriters, R&B. Nashville has become sort of this go-to writing city for every genre.
I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.
People don't want to listen to a celebrity tweeting about their charities and shows. That's why comedy writers do well - we put out little funny ideas.
There are a few Irish writers who have a very strong influence on me, especially on the 'Take Me to Church' EP.
I go back and research, say, every reference to the Gorgons, and I find what the classical writers said about them and it's so much richer than you might get in an average Greek mythology text. I feel like an archaeologist - I'm dusting off these things that people have not seen for thousands of years and bringing them into the modern world.
I don't have a writer's room. I write all the shows myself. Ninety-one episodes a season, I'm sitting there at the computer writing and writing and writing because I want the voice to be authentic so that the audience is hearing from me and not other writers.
It is easy to understand why conflict is so often highlighted: Writers of headlines or promotional copy want to catch attention and attract an audience. They are usually under time pressure, which lures them to established, conventionalized ways of expressing ideas in the absence of leisure to think up entirely new ones.
Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.
Writers, as they gain success, feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups.
Some writers are more natural public performers than others; personally I find it quite strange giving interviews. But everyone has parts of their job that they like more than others. You can't complain if you get to do what you love doing most of the time, can you?
I'm not someone who comes onstage and says, 'I'm rewriting this now.' I don't think it's fair to the writers or the director, or the other actors.
