I’m sorry if...I get too personal, if I make you uncomfortable, but writing is like one of the seven deadly sins, like Sharing on Mr. Rogers, and once you get the bug you’re trapped in The Neighborhood of Make-Believe forever.
But no matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it. You have ot believe in love stories and prince charmings and happily ever after. That's why I write these songs. Because I think love is FEARLESS.
I was once hired to write a column for 'The Guardian' and then got fired before I'd submitted my first one. That was unusual. Most newspapers wait until I've written at least one piece for them before firing me.
It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world.
I don't want to write a novel per year. I know that I need a break of one or two years. So maybe I invent some new, urgent activity so I don't fall into the trap of starting a new novel.
I don't teach writing classes anymore, and I'm really glad I don't, because I would feel very strange about telling people, 'Go out there and be a writer, and make a living from it.'
I'll be writing as long as I can hold a pen in my curled, crimped arthritic hands and then I'll dictate it, if it comes to that. They'll have to pry my pen out of my cold, dead fingers - and even then, I'll fight 'em for it. Guaranteed.
Leo had once joked about writing an allegorical sketch where Parody packed its bags, shut up shop and put a sign on the door which read: “Closed. Any inquiries please contact the Real”.
So here I am with this double life, one where my grammatically incorrect writing is a nice success with tens of thousands of readers, and another one where my carefully written books are read by a dozen people.
The curly red lines across the African deserts had the fascination of a magnet, and I hoped fervently that the pioneers who were writing their names over the blank spaces, would leave just one small desert for me.
By my hand and for the good of the state; the bearer has done what has been done. Hmmmm ~~~ one should be careful what one writes for one never knows into whose hands it may fall.
All words are written in the same ink, 'flower' and 'power,' say, are much the same, and though I might write 'blood, blood, blood' all over the page, the paper would not be stained now would I bleed.
Should you care to write (and only the saints know why you should) you must needs have knowledge and art and magic - the knowledge of the music of words, the art of being artless, and the magic of loving your readers.
It's the first thing I tell my students: If you could understand, really understand, that no one to read your work, then your writing would improve vastly by the time we meet in this classroom again.
If a bloke gave you a hundred quid for a book you can bet your life it’s his way, but if all the poor and suffering people raise their hats to you for writing it - that’s different; it makes it worthwhile then.
I don’t want to re-write the same old book with the same tired techniques. I’d rather bring something new to the table that’s true to me and that people will have a genuine reaction to. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?
The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice.
Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise.
I don't want to talk too much about the nitty-gritty of writing. It's rather like a pressure cooker with a certain amount of pressure in it - the more you let out, the less you cook.
Do not write if there is no tremendous urge to do so. At the heart, there must be an inspiration or muse or one of those old-fashioned things. Else, why bore yourself, destroy other people's interest and kill trees?
I didn't go to high school. I think that after you learn to read and write and do your numbers and flush the toilet behind yourself, you don't need no more schoolin'. You need to get out in the water and swim.
