I don't have any structured grand plan; I just intend to keep writing about the things that interest me-some of which change, some of which don't.
I'm a soul maker. I write songs. I'm making cartoon shows. I'm planning on putting stuff out myself on my own, on a TV station online. I'm not limiting myself. I'm doing it all at once.
My job as a songwriter is to write good songs.
Marc Cherry is so good at writing himself into a corner, then writing himself out of that corner. Its really fun to watch that.
I'm a fan myself, so I try to write the kind of comics I want to read.
I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words. I use everything. Turning life into stories is how I make sense of my experience.
It surprises me constantly that my sometimes-unorthodox approach has such a large following, but I'm very grateful to my readers for allowing me to continue writing 10 or 12 hours a day.
I think the only way you can get something out is to invest some real emotion into it, which means you're already writing about what's going to happen to you, whether you know it or not. That's why I'm always surprised when people talk about writer's block. Because to me, it can't be stopped.
I write dozens and dozens of pages more than I need, and then edit them down to size. It's more like sculpture than construction.
Write comic books if you love comic books so much that you want to write them. Don't write them like movies. Comics can do a lot of things that movies can't do, and vice versa.
You really have to get out of an actor's head to write because actors only care about their part and it revolves around their part so "This is the important part because this is the part where..." .
Writing a screenplay is like writing a big puzzle, and so the hardest part, I think, is getting the story.
I'm not a tech fan. I don't get that charge that comes from having the new little gizmo in your pocket. Maybe I'm a dinosaur. There's nothing battery-operated that will help me write songs any differently from the way I've done it for years.
When I am writing, I'm very much on the ground, on the same ground my characters are treading.
If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive-then don't be a writer.
Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.
I do not wanna write a song like 'Coathanger' so Andrew Breitbart can rage against me on his web site. It's not my idea of fun.
I started to work up in my old bedroom, playing, writing songs, and it somehow came to me that I could introduce soul music. Nobody seemed to be doing that.
I went to Morocco, joined a band called Pegasus, ran out of money, went to Gibraltar and worked on the docks, writing songs about the sun and the morning and the birds.
I find it somewhat difficult to write with other people, although it has happened occasionally.
I don't understand why anyone would collect my work. Please understand... it's like writing Our House. It took me an hour, it was 30 years ago, get over it! But people say, No, no, it changed my life, and I don't understand that. I can't take that seriously as a producer of what I consider to be art. If they want to collect it, fantastic. If you see what I saw when I took it and it means something to you, then by all means collect it. If I make some money, um, fine.
It is amazing when you try and write songs without an instrument. It kind of forces the melody to be honed it. It has to be good. A lot of what I think are my best songs were made without an instrument.
The exciting part about sitting down and writing songs, playing shows, or being a musician in general is that you never know where those songs and that music is going to take you. There's such a cool feeling about that the phone could ring tomorrow and someone could say "he guess what? your song..." That really is cool.
When I was asked to write a message for your brochure I gladly accepted as I remember my first school tour of England was Wales. The experience proved extremely useful in my development of a cricketer.
I set out to write a screenplay but, since my early 20s, had dreamed of writing a novel.
