If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.
In the early days, it was, you know, I used to weep while I was writing. I used to grab at any kind of anything, any hint, any tip of how to make it easy.
I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.
I like to sit down every day and not know where the book is going. I have no idea where the book is going to go or how it's going to end as I'm writing it.
Professor Al Drake encouraged me to just write the way I talk. I decided if that's what I needed to do, I didn't need to be in school to do it.
But then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there’s no feeling like it." [ , 3:AM Magazine, June 2003]
An original something, dear maid, you would wish me to write; but how shall I begin? For I'm sure I have not original in me, Excepting Original Sin.
I never write my stories as a wake-up call as such. I simply explore the kinds of situations that I find personally challenging by placing characters into situations that challenge them in similar ways.
I write, I teach, I direct. I sail around the world for Holland America two months out of every year doing a seminar where we discuss film or theater and do improvisations.
The idea that I'm going to have to sit down to write some fiction where I'm going to have to think of a plot would really scare me, because it would come out a mess.
No writing effort is ever wasted. At the very least, it's practice, and a writer never knows when he or she might usefully cannibalize an earlier effort for something new.
One of the reasons why I don't write the same kind of book again and again is that I get bored very easily, so I like to make things interesting for myself.
Twitter seems like a busman's holiday: just more writing. I have no plans to do it. I'll just stick with my 24/7 webcam. I'm old-fashioned that way.
As I write at the end, if we step back and face the enormity of the torrent, then we have taken the first step to imagining what we might want to do about it.
I don't want to be an editor! I don't want to direct; I'd be a horrible director. I don't want to write - I have a 'story by' credit on one film I did. And I don't want to edit at all.
One of the things I've found most challenging about writing a multibook series is keeping it fresh and evolving while still delivering the familiarity that keeps longtime fans devoted to the characters and story world.
I can still boss people around. I can still write. I can still read. I can still eat, and I can still have very strong views.
The people whose necks hurt when I write about the Middle East tend to live in Brooklyn or Boca Raton: the kind of Zionist who pays another man to live in Israel for him. I have nothing but contempt for such people.
DMX wasn't checking what his fans were saying to him on Twitter or Facebook. Jay-Z is on a boat in Saint-Tropez. I'm hands-on. Girls write to me like I'm their diary. That's a huge responsibility. I don't take it for granted.
I just believe that young people need to be able to learn how to write in their own voice. Just like a musician, you pride yourself on having your own distinct sound.
When I write, I don't translate for white readers.... Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we're able to read him. If I'm specific, and I don't overexplain, then anyone can overhear me.
