The biggest challenge of my career, which is something that authors of genre fiction face all the time, is writing something fresh and new and at the same time meeting reader expectations.
When you're writing a story in bits and pieces, month in and month out, there really isn't time or space for reflection, no room to learn what those scripts had to teach you.
Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.
I grew up doing theatre and spent a long time as a playwright. I still think very visually when I write.
I'm a very compulsive person, so I spend most of my time drawing or writing my diary, patching things up and carving bits of wood - I've carved two of my guitars.
I was probably never going to get to do the kind of things dramatically that I really wanted to do, so I returned to theater from time to time, and to write, and produce. It's by no means sour grapes.
If somebody takes the time, a: to read a book that I have written, and then to b: care about it enough to write me and ask questions, surely I owe them a response.
I don't know how much longer I'll be around. I'll probably be writing when the Lord says, 'Maya, Maya Angelou, it's time.'
Outside of interviews, I spend very little time thinking about myself. I spend time thinking about my writing and my children and other things that are pertinent.
Passage of time can be mind-numbing to figure out in a screenplay. It's the easiest thing to do in prose, not just by writing 'four years later', but you can shift time in a sentence or two.
'The Warmth of the Sun' was a very beautiful song that Brian and I wrote in the time period associated with President Kennedy's assassination. We didn't write words about that, but it was around that time we recorded that song, and there's a lot of e...
People don't understand how much time and work it takes to make somebody laugh, and how hard it is to write a script, to put together the story, the characters. When everyone laughs simultaneously, there's no greater feeling.
In 'The Interestings' I wanted to write about what happens to talent over time. In some people talent blooms, in others it falls away.
I think there is a rage against women. I've come to see that now although at the time I did not notice it. I was preoccupied with my teaching and my writing.
With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The thing is, they only got there before me. If I'd been born at the same time as John Lennon, I'd have been up there.
I think one of the things I was shocked about was how interested the world is in 'American Idol' and how people, writers, they write about 'Idol' all the time, and I guess I didn't expect that.
Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.
Not every song I write is ecstasy. And it can happen only one time. After that, when you sing the same melody and words, it's pleasure, but you don't get wiped out.
The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs.'
Writing songs is not something I wanted to share with people for a long time. It was precious to me. I didn't want someone to crush it. I waited until I felt strong enough to take the criticism.
It got so bad that by the time I was graduated, the only reading I did was in order to get the grade and the only writing I did was in order to get the grade.
