I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
As far as arrangements after the basic track is cut, if I'm writing a horn arrangement or playing strings, I might arrange that, plan that out. Other times, I'll just sit and roll tape.
I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write.
As I'm writing, certain things become clear to me and certain things begin to feel right and make sense. The pieces start to fall into place.
I've always looked upon the Ducks as caricature human beings. Perhaps I've been years writing in that middle world that J.R.R. Tolkien describes, and never knew it.
You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself wholly to the the theme -- and when you so give yourself -- you lose appetite ans sleep -- it cannot be helped --
So, once I get writing I really try and put five to eight hours a day in my room with a guitar to really try and come up with stuff that feels interesting enough to me to keep it.
I was haunted by a bear attack that happened in Algonquin Park in 1991. The problem was that I don't believe in ghosts, so that ruled out an exorcism. My other choice was to start writing.
I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you're recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one song.
If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on two areas learning to write and to speak before an audience. Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively.
I'm opening a store at the end of the month in the New York meatpacking district. I'm launching a line of bedding this summer, and I am writing a book that will be out next January.
I always knew when I graduated from high school, I'd go to college. I never thought about what I was walking away from... I just wanted to study literature and writing.
Judging from the letters I've received from obviously feeble-minded persons who wish I would write another These Old Shades, it ought to sell like hot cakes.
When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.
I've always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they're still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self.
When I'm writing from a character's viewpoint, in essence I become that character; I share their thoughts, I see the world through their eyes and try to feel everything they feel.
I was just about to begin writing 'Mirror Mirror', within about a week of it, when September 11, 2001 happened. I found myself incapable of caring about fiction-making for a number of months.
For all my longer works (i.e. the novels) I write chapter outlines so I can have the pleasure of departing from them later on.
What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph.
