The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too - eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko's, Fatburger, Subway - I was a sandwich artist - and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.
Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade.
I try to be careful to not just say it's a greatest hits show because we've also made efforts to keep people up to date so to speak because we continually write and record and put out albums.
I don't think Capote loved Smith. But he did make a deep connection. It upset some people, because that had never been the approach to journalistic crime writing, to look into the mind of the killer.
Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because she's had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy.
I've never been very attached to genre labels and never set out intentionally to write historic fiction. Besides, what you consider historic depends on how far back your memory extends.
Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.
I binge write, basically. I do a lot of prep, research, setup. I'll have a pretty detailed outline. Sort of like a beat outline. And then I'll add little notes and dialogue ideas, and I'll just create a 20-page document.
Sizing up succinctly his lack of formal education compared with his determination to learn from others, the author writes, "I went to college with every person I ever met.
I'm a singer and working on my second album. I write and produce. There is so much more that satisfies me. So there's not just this one ambition to become an American movie star. Because I will never become an American movie star.
To describe an emotion is to feel with words. To communicate a moment of existence is to bridge the eternal and the temporal with an intellectual engagement of body, soul, spirit, and mind. To write, therefore is to entangle the mysteries of the univ...
One thing, when you're an actor, you finish something and then you have to worry about what the next gig is. When you're a musician, you can always write your own stuff, and I'm working on new stuff for a new album right now.
I'm not a risk-taker; that's probably why I write - because when you're easily bored, but you don't like taking risks, you end up doing it all in your head.
So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.
I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.
'Weedflower' was already in the copyediting phase when I heard about the Newbery award, so it didn't really influence my writing of that book, but since then, I have become more aware of having an audience.
When I write, it feels like there are two little creatures that sit on each of my shoulders. One whispers, "You can do this. You've got what it takes." The other sounds like my mother-in-law.
Crime stories are our version of sitting round a camp fire and telling tales. We enjoy being scared under safe circumstances. That's why there's no tradition of crime writing in countries that have wars.
Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap.
We never let go. Ever. Even with punctuation. It's frightening. I can't see anyone from any record company ever writing an email to Neil and not getting it back, with corrections.
Well I don't feel sectarian against sparseness, although I sometimes get a little chippy about this. I resent the way that a certain notion of parsimony has become the norm for skilful literary writing.
