Writing Quotes
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I was writing a story, 'The Artistic Career of Corky,' about two young men, Bertie Wooster and his friend Corky, getting into a lot of trouble, and neither of them had brains enough to get out of the trouble. I thought: Well, how can I get them out? And I thought: Suppose one of them had an omniscient valet?
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With writing, timing is everything. Being in the right place at the right time.
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I had to find stories no one else was writing, so I got away from the quarterback and the coach. I'm still looking for stories no one else has written.
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Poetical feelings are a peril to scholarship. There are always poetical people ready to protest that a corrupt line is exquisite. Exquisite to whom? The Romans were foreigners writing for foreigners two millenniums ago; and for people whose gods we find quaint, whose savagery we abominate, whose private habits we don't like to talk about, but whose idea of what is exquisite is, we flatter ourselves, mysteriously identical to ours.
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I do not like people writing songs and then other people singing them. A lot of people don't even sing their own songs anymore. It's like producers these days have ghost producers; 'I don't produce, but I am a producer.'
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I've been writing 'Green Lantern' for a long time, and one of the reasons I've enjoyed it is because the depth of stories you can tell is pretty endless with space and everything.
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I pay attention to the actors and stuff, but not even that much. I don't pay attention to who's writing.
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I worked at magazines for over 10 years before I even thought of writing a book.
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I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.
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After a long time spent learning how to write as a woman instead of as an honorary man, I was able to come back to Earthsea and write the next three books in another and newer tradition: that of questioning, rather than accepting, the gendering of power as male.
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To learn a piece on the piano - even a simple one - has proved every bit as agonizing as writing a chapter in a book, every bit as tedious and hopeless and halting. But this is not to say that the piano hasn't helped my writing. It has, just not in the ways I expected.
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There are writers for whom names mean nothing; everybody could be called John and Elizabeth, and the writing would be just as good. A name, of course, is like a piece of clothing, isn't it? It gives you an impression right away.
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I had all these raw, gritty rock records that really inspired me sonically, and so I think everything I listen to when I started writing my own songs kind of came out naturally, and it created this new sound.
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Writing fantasy lets me imagine a great deal more than, say, writing about alligators, and lets me write about places more distant than Florida, but I can tell you things about Florida and alligators, let you make the connection all on your own.
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I would never tell myself, you have to write 20 pages today or something. But I do try to show up. Read what I wrote, fix things.
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I began to write what I called 'rhythms' ie unrhymed pieces with no formal metrical scheme where the rhythm was created by a kind if inner chant... Later I was told I was writing 'free verse' or Vers libre.
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I don't want to write poems that are just really clear about how I'm aware of all the traps involved in writing poetry; I don't want to write fiction that's about the irresponsibility of writing fiction and I've thrown out a lot of writing that I think was ultimately tainted by that kind of self-awareness.
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Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?
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I've always as a performer on stage tend to sort of throw myself into the character, whatever I've written about, so it depends on how I'm writing or what I'm writing about.
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I've done a lot of collaboration over the years, but right now I'm enjoying writing by myself and just being me again for a while.
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I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college.
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The story of the English writing system is so intriguing, and the histories behind individual words so fascinating, that anyone who dares to treat spelling as an adventure will find the journey rewarding.
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I'm halfway through a novel set in two time frames - Austin in the 1960's and Alpine Texas in present day. It started out to be a small, lighthearted, humorous book about family relationships; I was tired of writing war stories and tragedies.
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My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.
