I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this. [ , New York Times, April 19, 1992]
A lot of people, myself included, are excited about blogging and stuff like that, citizen journalism, but I do remind people that no matter how excited we are, there's no substitute for professional writing, no substitute for professional editing, an...
What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.
I was curious about experimenting with different colors - kind of like having an expanded orchestra. Suddenly, instead of just writing for strings, you can add bassoon and oboe and brass. I like these extreme differences in sounds right next to each ...
I definitely want to act and I want to sing. If those two fall through, I want to become a writer, probably, like a songwriter for other people, or a novel writer. I write a lot, and I read a lot. I like reading fiction.
I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating.
You can't really write until the characters kind of show up one day and tell you what they're going to say. You start to hear the rhythm of the way the people talk, and then it becomes easier.
If you are a writer and you write/understand sarcasm please be thankful to the government and the masses. Without their hard work and supreme idiotism it wouldn't have been possible. You owe them the brutal sarcasm, they've earned it!
I was a real mess at school. I got a bit of a reputation for being the weird girl: the girl who'd go silent randomly and just kind of write down replies to people's questions in a book.
I'm kind of concerned about 'Ego & Hubris' because I'm thinking that people will read it and maybe even be entertained by it, but at the end of it, you know, they'll wonder, 'Why did this guy write this? What was the point of it?'
I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces.
If you're gonna use simile, analogy, metaphor, be descriptive and have some flowery adjectives and a few odd nouns and some engaging bits of dialogue or sentiment, then you're sort of writing a novel, really. But rock lyrics are not really known for ...
When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the reader's heart.
Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.
Whatever you want to do in the industry, do it on the smallest level at first. If you want to be a writer, write a screenplay in your house. If you want to be an actor, put on a one-man show. If you want to be a stand-up comedian, go to an open mic.
I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult doing it I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.
When I was 12, I went to boarding school, where I discovered the computer, which meant I no longer had to write something down and get someone to play it, I could just type it into the computer and hear it back.
I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books.
When writing the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams wrote: I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.
When I'm writing, I need to amplify my thoughts and feelings on just a conversation that I might have had with somebody - somebody close to me. It's often the case that the people closest to me are the people on my mind the most.
When I settled to writing seriously, which would be in my 30s, I did expect to be published eventually, but my aspirations weren't very high. A published book and a few appreciative readers was my idea of heaven.
