Writing Quotes
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What's the trick to writing a good bad guy? Well, for me, it's always been the idea that you pit yourself against authority, you know? I think that's what it takes - and then you can write villainous characters.
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I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.
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Every book is its own experience, the writing of it.
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I work in musical theater because people keep writing quality stories in the genre, and I'm really all about investing in a piece that says something about our current time, that is, a reflection on who we are today.
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Politicians generally act as if there is no cost to reconnecting with voters by building new New Deals. But the whole exercise of writing law out of New Deal nostalgia is a form of national narcissism. Call it New Deal narcissism.
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The most important thing when starting out with essay writing is to find a voice with which you're comfortable. You need to find a persona that is very much like you, but slightly caricatured.
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I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I'm in good company there.
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I'm very keenly aware that there aren't very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way.
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My writing, it's mostly fiction, but I want it to feel intimate and real.
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I think everyone assumes that I talk to my parents a lot about writing, but I didn't - they're my parents. We didn't have constant workshops running in my household.
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There would be times when I got so much work that I didn't have time to write. School interfered with writing more than writing with school.
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I think one of the keys to better writing is releasing all of your ideas and to not be afraid. Dream big. This could be the greatest novel in the world you know.
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Nashville has become sort of this go-to writing city for every genre.
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Modern literary theory sees a similarity between walking and writing that I find persuasive: words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space. In The practicse of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau writes, 'The act of walking is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian; it is a special acting-out of the place...and it implies relations among differentiated positions.' I think this is a fancy way of saying that writing is one way of making the world our own, and that walking is another.
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Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.
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To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.
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I've never been good with deadlines. My early novels, I wrote by myself. No one knew I was writing a novel; I didn't have a contract.
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I'm not writing just about melancholy stuff anymore, I made a point to cover a wide range of emotions.
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Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.
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There was a time in my life when I wasn't sure I'd ever write a short story again because I had started writing novels, and I am fundamentally a lazy person, and the fact is that a novel is a lazy person's form, really. That is, you can amble; you can digress.
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It was Noel Coward whose technique I envied and tried to emulate. I collected all his records and writing.
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My approach is to treat writing very much as a job.
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Some of the stuff I'm writing is almost like hymns, some of my first singing and choral experiences were in church, the Church of Christ in Hicksville.
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When I finally finished writing 'Sisters,' I started getting hired for lots of rewrites.
