I always appreciate people's opinions, but sometimes I have to take a step back and remember why I'm writing and what I want to do with it. Shutting out the voices is difficult but it's been good for me.
I probably have a higher opinion of my writing than the average person, at least when I'm in a good mood, but I don't really think of my plays as only being relevant to a particular month or year.
Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.
I teach one semester a year, and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to ...
My writing partner, Nicki, and I became obsessed with a monologist who performs unscripted shows equipped with nothing more than scribbled bullet points and a glass of water. We wrote him a fan letter and found ourselves sharing lunch and eventually ...
My biggest fear in writing 'Gossip Girl' was that the characters would sound like stereotypical rich, air-headed heiresses. These were my friends. They were smart and multifaceted. They had interests and passions. They wanted to become lawyers and do...
I am thrilled to write 'The Treasure Chest,' and to bring to life not only the childhoods of famous people from history, but also the characters of Maisie and Felix, who I hope you will fall in love with just as I have!
I would rather give up acting than become world famous, because I think you pay a very high price. Writing and putting new plays out into the world has informed what I do, and I've had a lot more freedom to play really interesting parts.
I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth st...
I became a Christian late, in my late 30s, so I had a lot of things that I was bringing into my Christian life that I regret. And I had a lot of questions about faith, so that's where I start when I write.
And in that I cannot send unto you all my businesses in writing, I despatch these present bearers fully informed in all things, to whom it may please you to give faith and credence in what they shall say unto you by word of mouth.
My gut feeling about sequels is that they should be premeditated: You should try to write a trilogy first or at least sketch out a trilogy if you have any faith in your film.
There was a long stint during my childhood after I gave up on being a pro football player - we're talking sixth grade here - that I strongly considered a future writing and drawing comic books. I have been making stuff up ever since.
Frontiersmen good and bad, gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the future, have been my camp companions. Thus, I know the country of which I am about to write as few men now living have known it.
In writing my historical novels, I have to rely upon my imagination to a great extent. I think of it as 'filling in the blanks.' Medieval chroniclers could be callously indifferent to the needs of future novelists. But I think there is a great differ...
When I wrote 'Neuromancer', I had a list in my head of all the things the future was assumed to be which it would not be in the book I was about to write. In a sense, I intended 'Neuromancer', among other things, to be a critique of all the aspects o...
People forget how outcast 'They Might Be Giants' can be. They have a reputation for writing really deft, funny, clever melodies, and they also make a lot of music for kids, which is terrific, but when you see them in concert, they can rock the house.
It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women....
I always felt that it was easier to take a funny person and teach them to write television than to take somebody who was a television writer and make them funny. And I discovered a lot of great writers that went on to do a lot of great shows like 'Se...
As an actor you get categorized by other people, but it's not like I arrange myself into comedy mode or serious mode. If it's good writing you just have to play it true - if it's funny, it's funny. But obviously you don't want it to be amusing if you...
No, writing musicals is the hardest thing in the world. And it was really funny, because I remember when the South Park movie came out, there were some critics that said, 'Well it's obvious that in order to get it to be 90 minutes they filled some ti...
