Writing Quotes
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You have to keep writing. It's almost like practice, almost like tennis, that actually after a few days of not writing, first of all it makes you slightly depressed and uneasy, but it also affects the style when you start up again. You need to get the show on the road.
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When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes.
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Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.
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The really good stuff- the 'Hamiltons' - comes out after decades of writing and being committed.
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Teaching was great for me, because I got to show people how writing can really change the way you see not only yourself but the world.
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I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments.
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I've always thought that writing isn't really that hard. It's having a good idea that's hard.
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Everyone says TV's going down the tubes, and it's all reality, but there's some really good writing and some amazing opportunities if you're lucky enough to throw your hat in the ring.
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Most of the time you're writing for radio, you're writing for a label, you're writing to stick a hit, and you end up coming out with something that isn't necessarily genuine.
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One suggestion my wife and I have used in our personal finance courses we teach at college is simply writing down all expenditures and seeing where the money goes. That alone will cause heads of households to think twice about x, y or z expenditure, and to consider carefully whether they really need something or not.
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I've always been able to survive by writing, though.
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When my works are being translated, I always get this question from my translators: Up or down? Which means, should it sound biblical and highbrow, or should we take it all down to sound colloquial? In Hebrew, it's both all the time. People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech.
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It wasn't until I had been writing on and off for maybe ten years that I started to establish any kind of routine, thought I couldn't put a finger on an exact date, and this routine relates simply to the aphorism 'How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.'
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I'm not a very savvy operator - it's not who I am, it's not what I do - and so I have to go at things in ways that suit me. I just write what I write and the stuff finds its vagrant way in the world, somehow. The venues appear; the work always finds a home, eventually.
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Writing for the stage is different from writing for a book. You want to write in a way that an actor has material to work with, writing in the first person not the third person, and pulling out the dramatic elements in a bigger way for a stage presentation.
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I remember when I first started putting things on the web and people were writing about it. I totally didn't keep up with what was going on because I wanted to present stuff in museums and galleries and have some presence on the web. I feel fortunate to have posted stuff in the beginning.
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I've always claimed that success in writing - provided of course one had what it takes to make a writer - is like success in marriage, largely a question of good sportsmanship, of keeping on keeping on, of giving one's best and trying, everlastingly trying to make that best, better.
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Music - which I could never listen to while writing before I had children - became essential to my process.
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It's fun to have someone to talk to and get input from when you write. I usually get stuck when I'm just in my room writing by myself.
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What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means.
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If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves.
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I started writing more with my voice in mind.
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College was a wonderful time to really explore my interests. I ended up writing my senior thesis about gender inequality in the developing world.
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I've always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that's like my last draft of the screenplay.
