Writing Quotes
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I figured I’d probably write 50 scripts in my life. Out of those 50, I figured maybe five would be produced, and that maybe one or two would be successful. So I always kind of expected I’d write at least one successful film in my life. ... The way it all came together was kind of like Murphy's law in reverse—I don’t expect that kind of experience again any time soon.
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I find the most difficult part of writing is to get it down initially because what you have written is usually so terrible that it's disheartening; you don't want to go on. That's what I think is hard - the discouragement that comes from seeing what you have done.
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Writing about Jerusalem was very stressful; every word counts.
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I always say to my students, 'If you can do anything other than writing and be happy, then you should.'
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When I was a graduate student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for fiction writing, I felt both coveted and hated. My white classmates never failed to remind me that I was more fortunate than they were at this particular juncture in American literature.
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The purpose of me touring and writing is to create music and nothing else. Its really not about updating people on social media about things that have nothing to do about music.
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When I write a book I'm always questioning the project as a whole. I always feel I might have to just throw it away and forget about it, and I've done that with novels I've started and worked on for a long time. It's an option I need in order to write freely.
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It's really hard to write about art in general. But it's exceptionally hard to fictionalize art and make work that isn't a parody, or is something that could withstand critique and exist in the art world as a valuable object, or a true piece.
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God calls me to write the truth of my life transparently so that others can learn from my hurt and heartache without taking the field trip themselves.
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In America, where writers are preoccupied with the craft of writing, I always try to introduce this concept of the badly written good story. Turning the hierarchy around and putting passion on top and not craft, because when you just focus on craft, you can write something that is very sterile.
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One of my biggest goals, especially with writing YA novels, is just to have people enjoy reading.
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Writing is such a weird emotional thing. It's hard. If you sit down with a plan to write something, it's going to be harder.
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I read the 'Harry Potter' books as I was writing my own books, and I love them, but I don't think Harry was very much like I was as a kid. He's always brave, and he's perfect in a lot of ways.
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Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.
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The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
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I like writing teen characters because they’re vulnerable to the newness of things; and vulnerability makes emotional responses raw, vital and unguarded. Lacking a context of consequences, choices are riskier and stakes higher. Life is lived without a safety net. As an author and reader, I find that a mighty charge to drama.
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I was in my 20s when I started writing my goals down, assigning each a date that I would achieve them by. I was amazed when I started reaching these goals by the date I had listed on them. It was a daily visualization exercise, and it almost always works.
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I found once you start writing about God it's really fun. It's like a rock singer saying "baby." "Baby, baby, baaayy-by." You start saying "God" on the page and you don't want to stop.
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I've been writing joke songs since I was a kid and it served me well at S.N.L. I can write those in my sleep. In fact, I have.
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When even your fans are writing to tell you to get a life, you know you need to listen.
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Anytime you adapt work of somebody who you respect, as much as I respect him, it's an enormous responsibility. In honoring that responsibility, what we try to do is to continually use his work, and the writing that he did about his life and his work, as our guide. That starts with his intent for what he was trying to express when he wrote it, and it extends to his intent overall.
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You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.
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It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.
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The new contract between writers and readers is one I'm prepared to sign up to. I've met some fascinating people at events and online. Down with the isolation of writers I say! And long live Twitter.
