We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.
When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?'
Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.
If I can't sing them myself, there's nothing better than writing songs for other people and watching them be performed. It's kind of more thrilling than doing it yourself.
I write in a journal first, briefly. Then read something I've read many times before, for about half an hour, then rework what I wrote the day before.
I wish I could say I write 9-5. It's usually more like 8-6, every day but the weekends.
I got so anxious sitting in the make-up chair for hours with my face covered. I had my doctor write a prescription for valium. I couldn't have done it without the pill.
Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory. I like the atmospheres that result if episodes are narrated through the haze of memory.
My intention throughout has been to write, to create literature, and to be able to look people in the eye after I'd done it - the people I'd written about.
I can't say I wasn't warned. Alarms started clanging the day I signed to write 'His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra' (Bantam Books, 1986).
I write so the endangered thoughts roaming naked and vulnerable through the misty jungles of my mind aren't slain by the guns of practical living.
Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.
Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.
I really try to write every day. It's hard, but it's my favorite thing to do, so it's usually not too, too hard.
I'm still an old-school reporter at heart. Writing fiction satisfies my journalistic need to hear and relay the testimony of everyday people at the center of events.
I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead.
I don't know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, it's always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia.
Writing help us to express our thoughts, to share experiences, to think, to love, to inspire, to motivate, to challenge, to liberate, to learn, to hope, to smile and to wonder.
I want to do something splendid… Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead… I think I shall write books.
Never give up. And most importantly, be true to yourself. Write from your heart, in your own voice, and about what you believe in.
When I was working on 'Freddie,' I had been trying to write it on a computer for many, many years, but that delete button just won't let anything go forward.
