If I'm writing strictly for others, how does that show what I'm experiencing or thinking? I just got to a point where I realized I could be as personal as I wanted to be and people could relate to those situations if they so choose.
I have a horror of the blank page. I simply cannot write on a blank page or screen. Because once I do, I start to fix it, and I never get past the first sentence.
I had a writing professor at Brandeis who told me I'd never make it - and when I sold my first novel a few years later, I sent him a copy!
First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.
A picador is the guy in a bullfight who helps make sure the matador doesn't get killed by distracting the bull. That's what TV writing is. You're just distracting the bull long enough to stick around for the next set of commercials.
We write "I love you" on the mouth by the kisses that touch it. (On écrit "je t'aime" sur bouche - Par les bisous qui la touchent.)
I've always thought about myself as somewhat of a folk musician. I just write words. I don't think I'm even a musician. I don't play a lot of instruments, not really a soloist or anything.
I was a little bit perturbed by the whole big grief machine that grew out of 9/11. I knew that I wanted to write about it, but I wasn't sure about how to go about it.
The storyboard artists job is to plan out shot for shot the whole show, write all the dialog, and decide the mood, action, jokes, pacing, etc of every scene.
I try to keep the idea that there's an audience in as little space in my mind as possible, but you can't erase it entirely, the idea that when you're sitting down to write a song, people are going to hear it.
If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.
The act of writing is a way of tricking yourself into revealing something that you would never consciously put into the world. Sometimes I'm shocked by the deeply personal things I've put into books without realizing it.
I dread the promotion part of my job. It's agony, especially compared to the private, at-home joy of writing. But being a grown-up means doing every part of the larger task.
While writing, I tend to repeat the same song, endlessly, for thousands of times. This helps me ignore any lyrics, and helps create a consistent mood for each book.
But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you've got to compromise. You've got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.
Yes, I can speak a bit and I can read and write in Russian. I learned it from my grandmother who raised me with all the Russian fairytales.
In 'Pictures from an Institution,' Randall Jarrell was able to transcend the academic novel by simply ignoring it, writing a comedy with no plot at all beyond his own pleasure in language and humanity itself.
These matters having been arranged, I had a temporary awning erected near the river, and was for three or four days busily employed writing an account of our journey for the Governor's information.
People would write me hate letters. How dare I try to represent Hispanics when I was so white? I tried to make them see it was racism.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.
I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult, and this means, I think, that pleasure is out of the question. I would associate this with narcissism anyway, and I would disapprove of it.
