Writing Quotes
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My writing is a lens into the possibilities of the American experience.
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First of all I can only focus on one creative project at a time. I wish I could focus on two, because I really only write.
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The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect.
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We are all inspired by the incredible stories of handicapped people who write novels with their toes, cancer victims who run marathons for cancer research, bereaved parents who set up memorial funds for their lost children. How much easier is it for most of us to be small heroes simply by taking responsibility for our daily lives and transcending our ordinary obstacles?
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I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.
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Throughout much of history, women writers have capitulated to male standards, and have paid too much heed to what Virginia Woolf calls "the angel in the house." She is that little ghost who sits on one's shoulder while one writes and whispers, "Be nice, don't say anything that will embarrass the family, don't say anything your man will disapprove of ..." [ellipsis in original] The "angel in the house" castrates one's creativity because it deprives one of essential honesty, and many women writers have yet to win the freedom to be honest with themselves.
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Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?
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Everything I say about writing battles applies equally well in the boudoir.
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By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best.
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Here is a simple recipe to begin with. Get up every morning with the set intention of writing and go to your desk and sit there for three hours, whether you accomplish anything or not. Before long you will find that you are writing madly, not waiting for inspiration.
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Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think.
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The ideal reader's the same, and I suppose this person has never had a face or a gender or an age. It's just some kind of unknown other who will be sympathetic and read each word carefully and understand what I'm writing about. I suppose every writer feels this.
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I need to keep traveling, being a gypsy, having experiences and writing about them.
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Writing and working with producers is like dating - it sounds strange to say that, but you have to test people out. You have to be like: 1) I like your music. 2) I like you, you're a good person. 3) Let's hang out and see if we can work together. And that is where music comes from.
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Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything to do with those choices.
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Following takes why. Transactions take what. It has to be real. It has to be the same for writing a book.
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One thing that I don't ever want to do is write something I don't love.
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When I am not writing, I'm dying.
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I write with as much objectivity as I can.
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I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.
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Once I start writing about somebody, I become very protective of them.
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Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.
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Through Twitter, I've got a writing career and a directing career, as well as hundreds of other beneficial things that have happened to me. I love it.
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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.
