You won't make a living writing until you learn to write when you don't want to.
I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes.
When I write a song, it is to fill a niche in people's lives. To have a song for every experience if one hadn't been written yet.
Write. Enjoy writing. Then, and only then, worry about the business end of it. Start loving your hobby, and then you can't go too wrong.
It's real easy for me to write a lot of stories. I just go and I live through something, and I go home and write about it. It's that quick.
I keep a journal, and every day I write down one great play that I had that day. I don't write down any negatives.
Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve.
I think about my editor when I write. She's a good friend, too.
Some of my favorite movies are action movies. You want something good to say. That comes from good writing. But writing is not a skill I possess, unfortunately.
I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad.
Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.
The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.
I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.
When you write a song, the goal is not to convey the details of your life. You should write a memoir or something if that's what you're going to do.
Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what's going to happen in my life.
What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.
I write in the morning, I walk in the afternoon and I read in the evening. It's a very easy, lovely life.
I write to be truthful in my songs, which is why I wrote what's painfully truthful about my life in my autobiography.
I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.
I write the kinds of novels I like to read, where the setting is rendered with love and care.
