Writing Quotes
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To write honestly and with conviction anything about the migration of birds, one should oneself have migrated. Somehow or other we should dehumanize ourselves, feel the feel of feathers on our body and wind in our wings, and finally know what it is to leave abundance and safety and daylight and yield to a compelling instinct, age-old, seeming at the time quite devoid of reason and object.
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When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should 'teach writing,' which I have no idea how to do and don't really believe in.
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When I started writing songs for Temple of the Dog, I went to my room with my acoustic guitar, and I was happy staying in that mode. It was more chordal based and more lyric driven. I enjoyed not making riff-based songs built around a guitar idea.
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If I can keep losing myself - and finding parts of myself - in other people's writing and direction, then that's all I can really ask for. That's all I want, to keep losing myself.
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Honestly, I don't focus on what my writing is called. I don't mean to sound artsy and pretentious, I just really can't think of things in that way. For me, the point is telling a story that keeps people up past bedtime, while hopefully exploring ideas that resonate.
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I'm afraid there are no magical tips. There is no secret. Writing is all about telling stories as well as you can.
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I never considered writing as a career - it was always a creative outlet for me and something I just loved to do.
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When I was younger, my mother and I, we'd have these crazy, crazy fights. Everyone would storm out mad, and the only way that I'd be able to express myself was to write her. We would write letters back and forth for days. When I'm writing, I feel uninterrupted. I write what I'm going through and how I see it.
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If I found out some gal was trying to steal my guy, I'd want to give her a black eye! Instead, I wrote this song. At the time I was writing each song [on this album], you could figure out the frame of mind I was in by listening closely. With every song I've ever recorded, I'm in it. I wouldn't write about it if I wasn't in it.
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For me, writing is just processing.
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Whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever, you've got to be involved in it. It's got to come from the heart I think...that's what it's all about.
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My writing is different. I think it's better. I think it's deeper. But, strangely enough, it covers a lot of the old ground. Maybe it says it in a more sophisticated way ... but I [have written] about basically the same subjects over the years.
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'Thank you power' is writing down the moments that are good in your life so that you can go back and reflect on them - so you've got this sort of repository of good stuff in your past.
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The line of demarcation between history and legend is too thin to observe while writing; the two overlap each other unconsciously and unknowingly.
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Writing books that people want to read is helpful - my most successful book is my only police procedural, a very popular subgenre of the very popular crime fiction genre.
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When I'm writing the poem, I feel like I have to close my eyes. I don't mean literally, but you invite a kind of blindness, and that's the birth of the poem.
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Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it.
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I always thought that I was a terrible writer. And I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role because, of course, it's really not me.
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I lived at home off and on until I was 37. I have about a million college credits. I'd worry about writing about anyone else because I'd be invading their privacy, but you can use your mom and dad and their dog for everything!
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Anyway, the way political history is passed down is influenced and spoiled by the closeness of the writers to the political figures that they're writing about. It's a sad state of affairs, but there's probably more veracity of reporting in my work than there is in the newspapers.
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I do have a little bit more confidence in - or at least familiarity with - my process. For example, when it feels like it's going badly or that I'm lost, I know I'll eventually find my way because I've been through it before. But writing itself is still hard.
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They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for.
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After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.
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I think the more that I can find myself getting out of the way - like you said yourself - trying to get out of thinking too much, and sometimes something truly special can happen. That's the beautiful mystery of song writing - that you really don't know where these songs come from exactly, and you don't know how you came up with them - and god bless it that you should have the gift of channeling that.
