Depending on where I am in the process, sometimes I have a page count and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I have an hour count; sometimes I'm just happy to string a few words together. I do keep pretty rigorous hours, because otherwise you never get anything done.
I'm not worried. I'm just so grateful to be in the position that I'm in. I'm just going with the flow right now, and I think my album will come together quite nicely because I think everybody is on the same page.
I usually give a book 40 pages. If it doesn't grab me by then, adios. With young adult books, you can usually tell by Page 4 if it's worth the time. The author establishes the conflict early, sometimes in the first sentence. The themes of hope, family, friendship and overcoming hardship appeal to most everyone.
Focusing on that one review you feel is unfair misses the value, which is the whole symphony of opinions you get on your page.
When good news about the market hits the front page of the New York Times, sell.
That the Op-Ed page is very important in readers' and the nation's perception of the Times, the perception of its editorial positions, and of its implicit editorial positions as expressed by the publisher's choice of people who are given the freedom to write opinion columns.
All I've ever really done is page 3 in The Sun, and not every man reads that.
I would say seeing the original Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page at the old Fillmore was a pretty powerful influence on me.
In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page.
This may sound a little bit idealistic, but when I go to my blog, my Facebook page, my Twitter account, I talk to different people from all over the world, and you see how it's easy to establish a dialogue.
I remember going to the audition for 'Corrie.' I wasn't an actor - what they're often looking for in these rooms is a character, not what's on the page. They want to see what you are going to bring. So somehow, I got the job on 'Corrie.' For the first time in a while, someone really believed in me.
I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.
As much as I want to go out and tour every single day and I'm ready to rip it right now, there's five people in the band, there's five people who've evolved and grown and there's five people who have to get on the same page and want the same things, and it takes a lot to tour.
The interesting thing about Bettie Page that I discovered was to leave the mystery. She always retained a little mystery. Let there be some unknowns.
The sports page records people's accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing, but man's failures.
As a writer, you have control of the words you put on the page. But once that manuscript leaves your hand, you give control to the reader. As a director, you are limited by everything: weather, budget, and egos.
I feel as though my career really hit its high point when I was cast as a supporting actress in 'American Wedding'. I thought the script had a lot of depth and intelligence, and it really just jumped off the page.
With a film, you have to pare down and take stuff out and squish it all down into a 110 page script.
I have closed that page of my life without rancor. I do not disown any of the work done.
I'm pretty disciplined to keep the momentum of a story going by writing everyday, even if it's only a couple paragraphs or a page or two.
You start at the end, and then go back and write and go that way. Not everyone does, but I do. Some people just sit down at the page and start off. I start from what happened, including the why.
When you meet someone for the first time, that's not the whole book. That's just the first page.
It's fun to figure out a way to make something happen that will get the reader involved on a visceral level. When written well, an exciting scene on the page will actually have a physical effect on the reader - your heart will beat faster, your adrenaline will start to flow.
It's more important to me to get an e-mail that says, 'I saw your page and it changed my life,' than how many hits the page got.
It's so wrong when I pick up a new edition of Huckleberry Finn and I look at the last page and it doesn't say, Yours truly, at the end.
I shy away from showing cruelty on the page. A lot of the violence in my books actually happens off stage. The police come on to the scene after the event has occurred.
All actors bring something unexpected to the role because they have to translate what's on the page and make a real character out of the black-and-white text that's there in the script.
Once we truly grasp the message of the 'New Testament', it is impossible to read the 'Old Testament' again without seeing Christ on every page, in every story, foreshadowed or anticipated in every event and narrative.
Write a page a day. It will add up.
In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.
Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting.
Larry Page, co-founder of Google, is an unbelievable big thinker, and there was a saying in Google that if you wanted to know the future, go to Larry.
I went on the 'Outlander' Facebook page - this is when I kind of first got a sense of what people thought about Laoghaire, because I went on the 'Outlander' Facebook page and found this picture of myself, and there were all these comments, and a lot of them were great.
If you look closely, there is no book more visual than Three Trapped Tigers, in that it is filled with blank pages, dark pages, it has stars made of words, the famous magical cube made of numbers, and there is even a page which is a mirror.
For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.
For those of you who still believe in the Easter Bunny and that the letters that appear in your local newspaper come from concerned citizens who really care, I've got troubling news. At least in politics, most of the letters that get published on the letters-to-the-editor page originate in the campaign headquarters of the candidates.
