Writing Quotes
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You need to understand that a skilled professional songwriter can accelerate your success as an already talented musician. These people are writing every single day, so their craft is really sharp, and it's the best songwriters who consistently get on the radio.
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My writing is progressing slowly, but at least it's moving forward. I'm sure that's the case. The only problem is that I'm never absolutely certain that what I've written is any good.
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In my own writing, I avoid 'female' and try to say 'woman' because I feel that the word 'female' has connotations of not just biology but also non-human mammals. The idea of 'female' to me is more appropriate for a female animal.
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This album was total therapy. I'm way more at peace now. Writing these songs and saying everything we had to say makes it possible to move on.
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You can write a radical Norwegian or a conservative Norwegian. And when I changed to a conservative Norwegian, I gained this distance or objectivity in the language. The gap released something in me, and in the writing, which made it possible for the protagonist to think thoughts I had never myself thought.
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I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.
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It's good to get your hands dirty a bit and to test how you see things at a given point. And it's very pleasing after writing something like 'Atonement' or 'On Chesil Beach,' which are historical, to get involved in some plausible re-enactment of the here and now.
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I like scripts. I spend a lot of time writing them.
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When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.
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It's not a problem to be surrounded by other writers if that's the craft that you're doing. I suppose if you get obsessed with the notion of being a writer more than the writing itself, that would be bad. But I live near really smart, thoughtful people who take writing very seriously, and I can meet them for breakfast and talk books.
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As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.
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I'm sick of being known as the sexy guy that writes great songs.
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Cursive writing does not mean what I think it does.
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I had a great conversation with Trent Reznor. Trent said, "I'd have a sixpack, too, if I didn't write my own music!"
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The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.
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I could list hundreds of words I've come up against in the course of my work that did not exist in the era of which I was writing and for which I never could find a suitably old-time, archaic or obsolete substitute.
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Writing isn't about the process. It is about creating. The joy comes not from the process but from the creation.
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Usually my writing is very over the top and bombastic and very, like, 'I'm amazing! Look at me!'
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Well, yes, as I was a rather bad actor then and I wasn't making enough money, I thought, to make enough money to not make money as an actor, I'd better do some writing.
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Writing is not complete when you've added everything you could, but rather, when you've taken away everything that is not needed.
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I tend to push whatever is looking over my shoulder away when I am writing. It's once the box of books arrive that I say I'm going to be pilloried for this or that. But then you realize it's done, and there is nothing I can do. I'm proud of the book.
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Part of my motivation for writing mysteries for young people is that I loved mysteries when I was growing up, and now that I'm on the creative end of things, I'm discovering that they're even more fun to write!
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The most fun I ever have is sitting in with Rick writing, and we laugh at our own jokes.
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Freedom to tell any story I want, with all the imaginary tools of my trade, is why I love writing novels. I love taking an idea, fleshing it out into a new world - and going on adventures with characters who day-dream themselves into existence and take on lives of their own.
