I don't want my writing to be so unique that when you apply it to different genres, it seems like the previous show that people know you from.
If we are exhorted to play simple melodies with beauty rather than difficult ones with error, the same should be applied to writing; simple words greater effect.
Writing a novel is like knocking on a door that will never open. You are so desperate to get in, you will say or do anything. You feel: please take my novel.
I've been so spoiled in the theater, writing plays where I can just do exactly what I want and nobody messes with me.
I don't know if you've ever tried writing a Doctor Who story, but it's a lot more difficult than it initially appears, especially if you've got more than one assistant.
There's a book that's critical to understanding anxiety, a 17th-century book, 'The Anatomy of Melancholy,' by Robert Burton. I wanted to write something like that.
It was the part of Gambian culture where they give each other advice a lot, how they're always comparing things in order to get a message across... that really influenced the way I write.
I'm an actor, not a writer. I'd be pretty annoyed if the writers tried to come in and hang over my shoulder telling me how to act, so I don't go in and tell them how to write.
The desk thing is a problem for me. The ideal one would be vast and perfectly clear. Yet the bane of the biographical existence is paper; if you're 'an artist under oath' you're writing from a mountain of documentation.
This means I must pay close attention to the writing, but equally so to the scientific background - which sometimes means doing fairly involved calculations.
People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films, don't see themselves as storytellers.
For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they're best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish - we're famous for travelling in search of adventure.
It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing
Being able to write an idea down succinctly doesn't make that idea any better than one which rambles on a bit. It just comes to the point sooner.
People always say, 'Write what you know', but I've always found that to be terrible advice. It's quite limiting, what you know.
My second husband encouraged me to go to a writing group at our local theatre. It was my 'coming out of the closet' moment.
For purposes of marketing, writers are designated as poets, novelists, or something else. But writing is about matchmaking, an attempt to marry sensations with apt words.
The reporter claimed he was going to write the article from my point of view. Instead, he made me sound like a little idiot. It made me never want to do another interview again.
Learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it and keep doing it until you get it right.
The way jazz works is that we take a theme, and then we write using the same structure, same chord changes, and then we can do different tunes.
When I write, I do not like using ten dollar words. I like the fifty-centers. Everybody has fifty-cents, even those that are too proud to admit it.
