There is a way in which all writing is connected. In a second language, for example, a workshop can liberate the students' use of the vocabulary they're acquiring.
If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.
The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes. You've got to entertain them.
There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country.
Whenever you're reporting, there's always something you can't say or write, but the questions, you always want to get as close to that line as possible. You want to ask the tough questions.
I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.
For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don't intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as invitations to dance.
It is vitally important for me, both personally and for my writing, to be able to return to China freely, so being barred entry has caused me deep concern and distress.
When the show started out, it was like all of a sudden we had to do 35 episodes and we had just a month and a half to write them, and it took me a while to realize that I was in charge.
Every day I wake up afraid that I won't be able to write, that today is the day it has left me.
If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.
Make today the day you begin that awesome idea you have had for years. Now go, write this book, and remember that today is an important day in history.
Stop beating yourself up over all the days you didn’t work on your story. Focus on what you can do today. Sit down, and write.
it's doesn't matter how long you spend the time writing words , the only thing that matter , is for how long your words will have an influence on their reader .
Writing is an extremely rewarding and humbling process, and I've learned to go with it, that even if it feels absolutely impossible, I will find a way to tell the next story.
Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it.
You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.
To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.
As an economics undergraduate, I also worked on a part-time basis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a company that was advising customers about portfolio decisions, writing reports.
Co-writing the 'True Blood' comic is a dream come true both as a performer on the show and as longtime comic fan. It's a real privilege to build on the rapidly growing 'True Blood' mythology.
When I sit down I write very fast... if I haven't finished a book in two or three months then I think it's not going well.
