I have so much music inside me I'm just trying to stay afloat. I don't tend to write for a particular band - you have to just write the songs and then let God into the room and let the music tell you what to do.
I write because I admire the act of rationalization, of seeking clarity in one's understanding of the complexities of life, and I'm bad at it. I'm slow. Writing, which is an arduous and slow process, proceeds at the same rate as my sloth-like mind.
I've been doing nineteen hours a day on London, nothing else, I mean this has been my whole life, and writing has been put on one side, and if I'm privileged enough to be the Mayor of this city, then I will not write again.
I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.
I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it's over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth.
My personality has two sides: a very social side and a reclusive side. I love writing fiction, although I can't imagine ever being locked up in a room writing all the time.
I write at the piano, so I write things that fit comfortably under my hands, and I'm not thinking in terms of any specific compositional methods. I'm just seeking sounds.
My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.
I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.
In the fall of 1989, I was writing 600-word columns at the 'Herald.' My heart always was in long-form narrative writing, though. It's what I cut my teeth on at the 'Boston Phoenix.'
I have never written a play, a story, a poem, or my one film - anything - unless something was troubling me enough, wrecking me, in fact, to drive me back into the absurdity of writing. I do not enjoy writing.
I've always liked police-blotter kind of writing, or the writing of a policeman, right to the point and hardboiled. That's how I see at least the prose elements of scriptwriting.
I write about personal experiences. I write about things that have happened to me and the people around me, so you just sort of keep this antenna up and on the lookout for things to say.
Novels are my favorite to write and read. I do like writing personal essays, too. I'm not really a short story writer, nor do I tend to gravitate to them as a reader.
The inspiration to write? Perhaps it's not so much inspiration, as a NEED to write. I get itchy and guilty and dissatisfied when I haven't written for a while. Ideas come to me and need to be written down.
What kind of hard SF do I write? Everything from near-future, Earth-centric techno-thrillers to far-future, far-flung interstellar epics.
Pat Moynihan could write books with one hand and legislate with the other. I can't; I have a short attention span. The slightest distraction would take me away from writing.
I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.
I wish I could write more make-believe. It's a lot easier to write about hard times and when things are going wrong. But I've never been a private person.
Writing is fun - at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That's easy to manage.
I think talking is as casual as blogging, and sometimes writing can be as casual as talking. My informal writing style is a political choice, because I want feminism to be more accessible.
