Writing Quotes
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While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. He's much the same Jack who climbs the beanstalk, vulnerable and clever and opportunistic.
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So it was just a case of getting a bunch of songs that I had been writing for years but hadn't recorded together, and the result was My Own Best Enemy.
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The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.
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Lots of things are hard work, but I think writing, for me, after I started acting at 13 years old. I like writing now much more than I do acting only because, well, partly because the scripts that are offered are junk.
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An intellectual's weapon is writing, but sometimes people react as if it were a firearm. A writer can do a lot to change the situation, but as far as I know, no dictatorship has fallen because of a sonnet.
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One thing that's really delightful is my books tend to attract people who are funny, so I get the benefit of people writing me with things that crack me up.
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The things I write are combinations of all of the people that have been influences to me.
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In fact, merely writing the facts on a piece of paper and stating our problem clearly goes a long way toward helping us to reach a sensible decision.
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I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight.
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On 'Stranger Than Fiction,' the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page.
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Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.
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I'm a full-time believer in writing habits...You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away. Of course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that's all the energy I have, but I don't let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place.
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Don't worry whether or not I am now happy. Today is only chapter one, we have yet to write a book.
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I got my first laptop, what I learned to do everything on, when I was 17 or 18, and I had no idea what I was doing. I'd only ever produced on an 8-track before. When I was about 13 and writing songs, I would write on that. It would literally be eight tracks, and that's all I had.
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For me writing is that place where I can escape; it's where I let my thoughts run wild.
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I'd like my writing to be recognized with a Grammy.
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Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to the desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.
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I've been writing long enough to know that fiction, as a rhetorical mode, works very differently from expository writing. If an author has a specific critique about contemporary society in mind, fiction tends not to be the best means to deliver that critique.
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I play all my own instruments. I write my own material. And I do not lip-synch. I sing live.
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One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience. My audience are the people who think God is dead. At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for.
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I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.
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I've been writing my entire life, and I'll always write.
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Everything in my life affects my writing. There are no separate parts of my life.
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I like to separate the music- and lyric-writing processes if I can. I'll sort of noodle around on my keyboard and my computer until I have a beat or a chord progression, I'll record it as a loop, export it to iTunes, then walk around with the loop and sort of talk to myself in the loop, and that's how I get the lyrics.
