Writing Quotes
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In my office I have a sign that says, 'Don't think. Just write!' and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, or even each sentence or paragraph. For me, stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times.
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When I hear a great new record, especially when it's by someone that I respect and admire, then a part of me is like, Why didn't I think of that? Why didn't I write that record? It makes you sick, but in a way it can be a great thing. It makes you want to go back to the lab and start writing again. Maybe it will inspire you to try a little harder.
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I came up professionally as a lawyer, and when you're a lawyer, writing a 50-page brief in one night is just another day at the office. You learn to make choices really quickly, and you learn how to get thoughts down very quickly.
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Writing-wise, I started when I was 17. Whatever was bothering me, I could just write about it in a song. I was in the west suburbs of Chicago, then I moved an hour south, and then I went to school up on the South Side - Saint Xavier, though I was at Purdue for a second before I dropped out.
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I worked in videogames for 16 years before writing my first book in 2009.
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All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
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My writing became more and more minimalist. In the end, I couldn't write at all. For seven or eight years, I hardly wrote. But then I had a revelation. What if I did the opposite? What if, when a sentence or a scene was bad, I expanded it, and poured in more and more? After I started to do that, I became free in my writing.
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I'd go so far as to say I was bullied into writing, but sometimes you need that.
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In a way, I'm very interested in writing about Maine, because I think Maine represents its own kind of history. It's the oldest state, and it's the whitest state.
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You could take away the singing, and I am fine. But don't take away my gift of writing. It is the best way I can relate and express what I am feeling and what I am going through.
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I do three things: speaking or teaching, which I enjoy the most, coaching is where I learn everything, and writing is where I reach people.
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In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It's the same with the cartoons.
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I've had quite a lot to conquer in myself apart from writing. Not that I've been a pure angel when I come to the end of it.
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It's usually a big kind of vent of frustration or anger or sadness that puts me in the right frame of mind to write. It's such a cliche to say that artists write when they're down, but it's true for me. It's a relief to get out what's eating away at my heart or my soul or my head.
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Whenever I'm out and I hear something, I'm writing. It's the process of writing it down and then just always creating wherever you go. I never stop creating.
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It's one thing to be banal, stupid, and idiotic on the inside. It's another to have it captured in writing.
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Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing.
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I never laugh or smile when I am writing. When I come home for lunch after writing all morning, my wife says I look like I just came home from a funeral. This is not bragging. This is an illness.
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When I write songs, I try to remove myself a little bit. Obviously, they're very personal to me, but it feels easier if I feel like I'm writing characters.
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I am perfectly capable of writing things about myself that one doesn't discuss in polite company, but I was raised by people who said you don't discuss politics, you don't discuss religion, and you certainly don't discuss people's sex lives.
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I can't remove the autobiographical slant from the things I write. You always bring yourself into what you're writing.
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Memory in Greek mythology is the mother of the muses, and it is so for me. Both personal and societal memory move me strongly, and that is one of the sources of my writing.
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I've grown up with a piano in the house, and that's where I started to be able to learn things by ear. Guitar kind of happened, and I was using it just for writing at first. Then, I was writing so much that I began to realise that I knew how to play, and that's when I started getting nerdy about it.
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Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and death already exist, not one of which tells the truth! How sick I am of well-constructed plots and brilliant writing!
