Writing Quotes - Page 1013

I can never tell what's going to end up being on an album until it's all finished. I'm reading the news everyday, and sometimes I just have to be away from it. And that ends up writing the songs for me a little bit.

The music brings me confidence and freedom. It's also the thing that can make me feel the most vulnerable. Once I finish writing all the songs for an album, once I actually record them, that whole process is usually easy and enjoyable. The part where I feel the most vulnerable is when it's all finished, I can make no more changes, I've turned it in, and there's no going back. All of a sudden I hear the songs in a different way; that's when I feel vulnerable.

Sometimes I just start humming something, find a melody I like a lot, and if it sticks around for a couple days, a few words will lock themselves into place. I might just get the first line. Then words just keep falling into the syllables. The choruses kind of write themselves and verses I have to work at a little bit.

Sometimes I'll write a song. When I've gone through something really hard in my life, sometimes it's other people's music. Other times it's actually writing the songs and getting out of mind and into the song.

Being in the hearing world was more of a challenge than being in the Deaf world, because I had to learn how to write and communicate in a way that I hadn't experienced growing up.

I like when people question if the characters are really villains or protagonists. These types are very interesting to write about.

You're not going to be a writer someday. You're a writer today. Discipline yourself to write and take time to enjoy writing. Do it a lot. Have fun with it. Begin now.

I began as a poet, moved to short fiction, then to novel writing, and, for the past twelve years, back to stories. I sometimes wonder if the pendulum will swing all the way back to where I began. As T.S. Eliot says, "In my end is my beginning," but for now I'm staying put, sitting tight, and loving the short story form way too much to leave it quite yet.

As David Roderick says about writing, "It's not the tale that pleases, it's the telling," and I could not agree more.

When Robert Bly visited Interlochen Center for the Arts so many years ago, he spoke to the creative writing majors and said, "The eye reports to the brain, but the ear reports to the heart." Perhaps this is the thing that musicians can do that writers can't ever, quite, but it is what I aspire to, that sense/power of the auditory, and the belief that to hear more clearly is to see more clearly, and that to see more clearly is to feel more deeply.

Once a poet always a poet, and even though I haven't written poems for a long time, I can nonetheless say that everything I've ever learned about writing lyrical fiction has been informed by three decades of writing in lines and stanzas. For me the real drama of fiction is almost always the drama of the language.

Compassion is the belief that things might improve, and even when there's little, if anything, to sustain and engender that belief. It's the place from which I write, and the more troubled the circumstances, the deeper into the hearts and psyches of these characters I'm likely to go, opening every door in that dark hallway, and walking all the way in.

If I don't read, I get lonely. If I don't write, I forget who I am.

I wanted to be a Teacher with a big T, teach the whole planet. It led me into writing and speaking to large groups.

Part of the acting gig is when you're let loose some improvs and put stuff into your own words every once in a while. That doesn't get you a writing credit or more money. It just makes it more fun.

Don't write down to your readers. The ones dumber than you can't read.

I'm so very grateful to the readers who put down their hard-earned money to read what I write. They don't have to do that. They choose to. And I try and earn that trust every time I put out a book. I know that sometimes the stories head into challenging territory and I respect that that can be hard. It's a wonderful journey, though, and I'm so glad we're all on it together!

The stories just keep showing up in my head - and I really hope they keep it up! I write what I'm told, and as long as I do that, I don't have any problems with writer's block or anything. The issues come only when I try to force the story or the people in it to do things they don't want to. As a control freak, it's funny that I've learned to be so comfortable with being out of control in what is arguably one of the most important areas of my life!

Conflict is the microscope of a book. When it's trained on a character, you see what's underneath the narratives of physical description. You see whether someone is strong or weak, principled or apathetic, heroic or villainous." (J.R. on writing the BDB series)

He nodded and curled over his paper, writing quickly. As his words took form on the white page, she got to watch him...and realized she never wanted him to go. She wanted him here beside her forever.

I have all of Elizabeth Lowell's first editions. I love these books. They are among my most treasured possessions. I have carried them in boxes through college, law school, apartments and then houses. They have seen me through my darkest moments and inspired me to my greatest joys. I sometimes get scared thinking what would have happened to me if I hadn't started writing. I literally cannot imagine another life. And Elizabeth Lowell played a huge part in getting me on the right path.

The way that I work is that I try to work in metaphors, and you can't write a metaphor unless you know where you're going, so I always think about the future.

Write the best book you possibly can, then dedicate yourself to getting people to read it.

The fact of picking up an instrument and writing a song and expressing yourself publicly has a powerful political dimension.

One writes such a story [The Lord of the Rings] not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much personal selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one's personal compost-heap; and my mold is evidently made largely of linguistic matter.