All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.
What I didn't realize when I was in school and what I suspect a lot of young writers today don't get either is that you have to create the world that you want to exist in as an artist.
There's a perilous word fiction writers need to watch out for. The word is 'had. '
I wake up to an email from the writers with the new script, and I always get so excited because I know it'll be better all-around than the script from the week before.
I'm inspired by artists and musicians. There are so many wonderful and talented people in the world. I love discovering new music, new writers, or new art.
People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.
A writers desire to write can only have come from previous experience of literature, and he'll start by imitating whatever he's read, which usually means what the people around him are writing.
Most of the writers in TV are from L. A. or New York, and those are places where people are cynical and snarky. And they fly from L. A. to New York in an airplane over this vast, expansive land where people aren't snarky; they're a lot more like the 'Parks and Rec' characters.
The climate stubbornly refuses to co-operate with computer models and the writers of alarmist popular articles and books.
At MGM there was a script cage in the basement where they'd show rushes. And I thought to myself, "How do I get into the script cage and find out what my future is?"I climbed into the script cage one night and spent the whole night in there. I saw the bowels of MGM. I saw the studio scripts that the producers had seen; the writers had just handed them in. And I started thinking this is a chance to pick my own roles.
Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.
I have an amazing team; I have amazing producers; I have amazing writers, but at the end of it, it's me making the decisions on the writing, the tone, the editing.
Let's face it, the great comedians now that are handicapped in the looks department are tremendous writers.
A great deal of what is being published by writers in the religious tradition is a scandal and is actually turning people away from the church. The liberal writers who are continually accommodating and whittling down the truth of the Gospel are responsible.
Writers are storytellers. So are readers.
I advise those who want to become writers to study veterinary medicine, which is easier. You don't want to be a writer unless you have no choice - and if you have no choice, good luck to you.
Hank Williams was one of the greatest writers of all time, and it's very sad that his career lasted for only six years.
If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.
Writing headlines is a specialty - there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn't write a headline to save their lives.
That is what diminishes the artist and his song. The artist is now hermetically sealed. The publishing company got him his deal and they expect to profit from his songs. So what if he is a better singer than a songwriter; let's put him in a room with a real songwriter. Something great is bound to come. . . except very often nothing great comes out of such contrived match-ups. Nobody knows where a great song comes from, and that's why so many writers credit the Lord as a co-writer (though I notice they never offer Him half the writer's royalties) when they come up with a real gem.