Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.
To be a good reporter, writing about war, you have to write about the people. It's not about the tanks or the RPGs or military strategy. It's always about the effect war has on civilians, on society, and how it disrupts and destroys lives.
I write for women because it's the only way I can use what I've experienced. It's good that people like what I write, but I don't want to go down the feminist path.
When they do bring on new people, it's good for the show. It's like getting a new toy. The writers enjoy it because it's a whole new character that they can write for, one that they aren't used to writing for. They can try different things.
When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. It needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.
A good ground rule for writing in any genre is, start with a form, then undermine its confidence in itself. Ask what it's afraid of, what it's trying to hide - then write that.
For me, it's always about what's on the page. I have tremendous respect for writing. When you recognize good writing, and you're lucky enough to get it, like with 'Lost,' that's what I follow.
I try to write 1,000 words. Some people say it's not about the quantity but about the quality. I disagree. You need to write a lot in order to figure out what's good and what's crap.
Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read.
I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to ...
I was writing an earnest novel about cruises in the Caribbean and I just started writing 'Bridget Jones' to get some money, to finance this earnest work, and then I chucked it out.
I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.
Anyone who thinks they can write the perfect comedy that everyone will love is a fool. I can only write what I think is funny and hope that there is a likeminded audience out there.
I write what I think is funny and I write from a sense of popping a balloon or a sense of injustice, whether it's about yourself, or whether it's about something else. It's my worldview; it doesn't mean that everybody has to agree with it.
I write because it makes God happy that I write. I sing because it makes God happy that I sing. And if it makes God's people happy, then all the better. But if it fails to do so, it's probably my fault.
There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a less category of knowledge.
I just sort of write the book I feel like writing given the emotional place I am in my life at the time.
Here's something I probably shouldn't be saying: I never listen to my soundtrack albums because I can't stand it. It's just stereo. When I write, I write in surround. My life is in surround.
Well I think after leaving prison, and having written three diaries about life in prison, it became a sort of a new challenge to write another novel, to write a new novel.
When I write, I'm constantly putting myself in the position of someone else as I write using myriad voices; I think that's a life skill all people should learn.
I like the busy-ness of office life. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that I love the solitary nature of writing. What happens is that you write when you're ready.
