Writing Quotes
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Sometimes it takes time to get into what ideas actually mean to you. Even when you're not writing a song, it's like that.
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Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.
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People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech. When I started writing, I thought [the language] was telling the story of this country: old people in a young nation, very religious, very conservative, very tight-assed, but also very anarchistic, very open-minded. It's all in the language, and that's one thing that doesn't translate.
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I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.
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Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.
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The more interesting the 9-to-5 work is, the more it takes away from my real work, which is writing.
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If you're writing a song, you have to write something that can be understood serially. When you're reading a poem that's written for the page, your eye can skip up and down. You can see the thing whole. But you're not going to see the thing whole in the song. You're going to hear it in series, and you can't skip back.
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Style has always been in my mind the author's Self, the creative expression of that Self.
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When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.
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The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are very often not really what happened. And as I started to write stuff down, I started to challenge what I thought I knew about myself, my culture, my family, all of it. It was a huge, destroying process that completely took over my life. I just wasn't here, I mean I was physically present, but I wasn't here, I was back in the 1980s.
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I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.
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What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.
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In school, writing was the only thing that really came naturally to me, but it wasn't until college that I realized that I could do it for more than just fun.
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There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
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When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his work by chance.
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Those who say they want to be writers, and aren’t writing, don’t.
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All writing is an act of self-exploration. Even a grocery list says something about you; how much more does a novel say?
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Writing for adults often means just increasing the swearing - but find an alternative to swearing and you've probably got a better line.
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I was about 29 or 30, and I started writing monologues for myself. I felt I got more immediate encouragement from that than I ever had in acting.
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It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.
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The single most important technique for making progress is to write ten words. Doesn't matter if you're badly stuck, or your day is completely jam-packed, or you're away from your computer - carry a small paper notebook and write a sentence of description while you're waiting on line at a coffee shop. I think of this as baiting a hook. Even if you have a few days in a row where nothing comes except those ten words, I find that as long as you have to think about the novel enough to write ten words, the chances are that more will come.
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To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
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Every moment I choose to write about is one I have deemed important enough to dwell inside of and share with others. I am holding this moment up to the light and saying, "Wow, will you look at that?"
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I'm such a history-nerd that, with time for research, I could probably enjoy writing in just about any time period.
