Writing Quotes
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I've been writing all these books that have been largely autobiographical and yet, really, they don't tell you anything about me. I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
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Torture yourself about your failures. And then get back to work.
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Writing a novel is a huge adventure; when it's going well it's more fun than fun. When it stutters to a halt put it aside. Go for a swim, go for a walk, take a week off. Don't panic or be afraid; you and your characters are in it together. Trust them to come to your rescue.
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I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.
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To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.
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Lyrics are so important, I hate every second of writing them, but it's something I take great pride in when it's finished.
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After the children grew up, I began to focus on my writing. My first books were part of a trilogy... The 'Wind Dance' trilogy.
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All art began as sacred art, you know? I mean, all painting began as religious painting. All writing began as religious writing.
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Over the years, you grow up, you mature and you see things in a different way, and it's reflected in the writing.
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My very first professional writing credit was on a movie called The Dunwich Horror, and Roger Corman was the executive producer.
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I'm directing and writing the 'Big Stone Gap' movie.
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Of the authors writing in English, I'd mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I'm afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.
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Who will want to write if writing doesn't pay?
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All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.
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Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.
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Me writing about tennis is like a baker baking bread.
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I have always loved science, but I have always loved the arts - drawing, painting and, yes, writing - more.
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Joss Whedon is a hero of mine, and what he's done for women in film and television, particularly when it comes to writing female roles that would typically go to a man, is awesome.
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Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and just roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject.
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I prefer drawing the things I've written to handing them off to another artist. Turns out I'm a huge control freak - and because I write in thumbnails, the art is already happening by the time I start writing!
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While writing 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' I enjoyed playing with minor things: inventing a train station in a town that has none, placing towns closer to each other than they are, changing the chronology of conquered cities. Yet I did not play with the central events of that time.
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I don't talk about Amy Winehouse as a 'singer.' She's a pioneer. I listened to her endlessly when I started writing.
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I often feel like not writing! Sometimes I overcome it by just sitting there until writing happens. Sometimes I don't write, because books often need periods of percolation.
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I have turned away from the thought of writing fiction in the past through what I suppose is, actually, fear. The direct, raw invitation for the reader to come in and explore my imagination is fairly scary for me so I have busied myself with so much else.
