Writing Quotes
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I am 54 and age is slowly writing itself on my face.
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It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don't kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound.
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Once I get my writing done, then I can turn my attention elsewhere - and not the other way around. The writing has to be the foundation.
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Henry Miller may write about revelers self-woven into a human hooked rug, because his ecstasy is solemn.
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My younger sister Debby had died of cancer, which started me writing - the sense of life being short. Cancer focuses your mind.
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There are two things John and I always do when we're going to sit down and write a song. First of all we sit down. Then we think about writing a song.
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My goal is to write stories that are connected, but not sequels in any meaningful sense. Like Howard's Conan tales or Leiber's Fahrrd & the Great Mauser stories.
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I've tried writing with music on, but I find it distracting.
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I think all writing is necessarily autobiographical to a greater or lesser extent, and the less it tries to be confessional, the more likely it is that you're somehow sneaking the things you need to say in there.
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If our writing is worth anything at all, then we have to put ourselves into it.
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The furniture is comfortable to me. Rather than making a chair to sleep in or a machine to live it, it is better to make a bed. A straight chair is best for eating or writing. The third position is standing.
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The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day ... you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.
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Thoroughly to unfold the labyrinths of the human mind is an arduous task.... In order to dive into those recesses and lay them open to the reader in a striking and intelligible manner, 'tis necessary to assume a certain freedom in writing, not strictly perhaps within the limits prescribed by rules.
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I think being an only child created in me a degree of self-reliance, which I'm glad of. It made me perfectly happy with my own company and perhaps was good conditioning for the protracted solitude of writing books as slowly as I do.
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Teaching is a great complement to writing. It's very social and gets you out of your own head. It's also very optimistic. It renews itself every year - it's a renewable resource.
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So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.
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I think when you're in the early stages of writing a song, it's important to shut off the part of your brain that tries to edit or criticize. That function comes in handy later, but if you let it in too early, you can trip yourself up.
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I actually started writing it because I was inspired by my own personal growth.
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I am a businessman at the end of the day. I have grown up with Excel sheets. I start out writing my novel with spreadsheets and the milestones in each chapter highlighted.
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Anything over-handed, I do left-handed. Like throwing a ball or serving in tennis. Otherwise, right-handed, like writing and shaving.
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The Lampoon was definitely quite formative. You know there's a crazy like kind of network of comedy writers from The Lampoon that are, that kind of you know like Seinfeld and The Simpsons and a lot of shows kind of had a lot of kind of Lampoon writers and so that was very formative. I mean, to me I got interested in comedy writing at an early like reading like Dave Barry.
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The comforts come from my movie and television writing. It is unusual to live this well simply from books.
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All education is despotism. It is perhaps impossible for the young to be conducted without introducing in many cases the tyranny implicit in obedience. Go there; do that; read; write; rise; lie down - will perhaps forever be the language addressed to youth by age.
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The good thing about writing a novel is that you're creating an imaginary world and can take a break when you need to.
