It is easy to write unthinking music.
Thanks to my solid academic training, today I can write hundreds of words on virtually any topic without possessing a shred of information which is how I got a good job in journalism.
People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.
Will Fortune never come with both hands full, But write her fair words still in foulest terms?
As a grad student and later as a writer, I have found it hard to sustain the pure, almost erotic love of reading I had as a kid - you know, where you climb in bed and read for hours and hours, and the book itself is this charged magical object. Later, when writing becomes your job, it's tied up with ego and all kinds of worry, and it's not always easy to get to that state of pure escape.
I admire the ballad form most of all. Stories are irresistible. I've always had a passion for stories, the endings being of particular importance.
If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.
The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.
I don't want security guards. I don't think security guards are particularly good for your writing.
I remember when I was younger I used to write in my diary: I want my luck to be spread. “Never give me anything too lucky all at once. I'll take a little luck now and then, but spread it for seventy years. “Now that all of this is happening, I'm sure the rest of my life will be ruined.
'Now I've tasted chocolate I'm not going back'. That's a great line. That's not me, that's all the writing. I mean it's like it doesn't matter who plays it, it's a great role. It's such a funny, tongue in cheek kind of great role.
My natural inclination is to think in scenes. So that's how I write, and the issue for me is usually: what to compress for speed.
Liza-don't let it make any difference. It won't, will it? With us, I mean. " "Of course it won't," I told her. But I was wrong. Six months of not writing-that's a difference. And so I lied to Annie. On top of everything else, I lied to Annie, too.
A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.
Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.
I do not feel like writing verses; but as I light my perfume burner with myrrh and jasmine incense, they suddenly burgeon from my heart, like flowers in a garden.
I love humor in writing, so I've written to the thing that's funny, there's the joke, but then I just kept going. I started thinking about all the bikes I've had stolen, and that got me thinking about crime, and that got me thinking about the city I'm in.
If the right thing came along, I would absolutely direct something I did not write because I love the process so much, but we'll see. I'm taking it day by day.
I knew I didn't want to put anything down in writing about the first time that I had sex. I knew that I didn't want to do that.
Some writers find that they don't know their themes until they've finished the first draft (I am one). They then rewrite with an eye toward balancing on that tightrope: not too contrived, not too rambling; does what I'm saying about the world below me actually add up to anything? Other writers pay attention to these things as they write the first draft. Either way, an awareness of the macro and micro levels of theme can provide one more tool for thinking about what you should write, and how.