Writing Quotes
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The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.
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Good writing is about finding and exploiting anecdotes that resonate with the reader. In storytelling, it's OK if you only make one point, as long as it's a good one.
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Now I'm fortunate to have a good band in CA, and play many solo gigs as well. My point is that I stopped playing in bands and played solo for four years, to get back into the groove and pulse of writing and singing and who I am on stage.
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When I am writing, even though it's hard and I do struggle often, I am happier than when I'm not writing. I feel alive. Whereas when I'm not writing, I feel like your common every-day neurotic.
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I don't think I'll write a large novel again because it was like being in jail for me. Even though that's the funniest book I've ever written, it was the saddest period of my life.
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It helps to be able to be alone. 'Cuz writing is done alone, unless you collaborate, but I don't do that. Ask my ex-wife.
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Writing is the thing that sustains me and keeps me going. It is a form of self-preservation for me.
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Writing songs has always been my first and foremost love, and, you know, whether I continue to have success as an artist or not, I will always write songs.
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In the end all books are written for your friends. The problem after writing One Hundred Years of Solitude was that now I no longer know whom of the millions of readers I am writing for; this upsets and inhibits me. It's like a million eyes are looking at you and you don't really know what they think.
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If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
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It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.
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TODAY can be a healthy unusual day for you-and for others-if you take time to give someone a smile . . . to express a word of kindness . . . to lend a helping hand to someone in need . . . ..to write a note of gratitude . . . to give a word of encouragement to someone who is temporarily overcome with problems . . . to share a portion of your material possessions with others.
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When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.
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I, as a young guy getting out of music school, I didn't like the prospect of spending my life writing music for about 200 people.
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So many people seem to imagine that because the actual tools of writing are easily accessible, it is less difficult than the other arts. This is entirely an illusion.
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Either you've got the bug, or you haven't. There are many things I'd rather be doing than writing a book.
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I had to appreciate other things about music, like the writing and the cadence and dealing with producers. I became a student. I wanted to learn the actual idea of what this industry was before I could creatively speak a lot of the things that I wanted to speak.
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I refuse to censor myself and kids will find their own way to my books and to all of the books that matter to them. As I write more honestly more kids will make their way toward me. And in subverting their repressive parents kids will learn the value of subverting the repressive nature of all authority figures.
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What the beautiful-writing writers are most attached to is almost always superfluous.
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Once a piece of writing gets to a moment where it's not going to get much better than it already is, marinate it. If you still like the piece, send it out and see what others think. If not, it's time to put it away and forget about it for a while.
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Most of my songs are pretty sketchy. There's not a lot of bass sections. I don't write big bridges. Sometimes I'll try. But it's hard for me to focus that way, because I always think it's more interesting to just see what will happen next.
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Communication is the most important skill in life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: You've spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening?
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I write to reach people's common sense and intelligence, to show them that if they unite they can make a different world possible.
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The problems that other writers encounter are so fascinating to me as a writer and as a thinker about writing. I have found that many times, my students are experiencing problems that I myself have experienced in my work, but the solution is different because they're different people.
