My revision methods are chipping things away and moving them around and trying to get things right. I'm also open in my own writing to failure. I want to fail. I want to go to a place where I don't know what I'm doing, where maybe I'm lost. And in that uncertain space, I make decisions, and I know all those decisions are going to change everything else. And at a certain point, you just come to a place of rest. In revising, you reduce your options so that nothing is possible, and you just think, I can't change this anymore because I've already passed that decision point.
When Nick At Nite is showing George Lopez, it's not doing what I'm thinking. But yes, I even write in the book about how MeTV went to Vince Gilligan and had him present an evening of his favorite television. So it can be done, but I think it can be done on a really large scale. The television of Dennis Potter, most of it hasn't been seen in this country. And that's just one example - it's a very obscure example. There's plenty of great TV out there. There's more crap - but there's great TV, too.
I keep writing books about why TV is good. There's nothing more fun to me than steering people toward something that I really loved that I think they might not otherwise see. That's the reason I do what I do.
Even though I'm a writer and I love books and writing books is my favorite thing to do, when you teach, and you can go through the history of children's television, and I show certain things, the students' jaws just drop. You're never going to hit the hammer quite as hard in print.
The idea that you waited for that particular issue to come out, but then you planned your TV viewing for the coming season, it was a completely different world. And I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, so there was a TV critic writing for the Miami Herald, Jack Anderson, that was very influential. Just to read, every morning, somebody who cared about TV as much as I did - they were an adult, and they were clearly being paid for it. That was an "a ha!" moment for me before I was even 10.
Nothing is easy in writing. I don't think for anyone. But dialogue is probably what comes most naturally to me.
When you write a book, you want to have fidelity to the character. Characters and their emotions guide the structure of the novel.
When you write a book, you want to have fidelity to the character. Characters and their emotions guide the structure of the novel. The author is aware that there's a certain amount of information she/he has to provide in order to satisfy the reader, knowing that she/he has set something up that must be paid off, but this payment must be made while maintaining fidelity to the characters.
Some is, I think, the personal in any act of writing. You find yourself caught up: you start a sentence, and it becomes revelatory, not just of the character, but of you as well.
I spent seven years writing The Free World. There are a lot of things I accomplished there that I'm very proud of, but I didn't want to spend another seven years writing a book like that.
It is actually a lot harder to sit down and write from A to Z. But for me at least, it's the only way I can do it, at this point, with any moderate success.
I can write with a crying child on my lap. I have. Often.
Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.
I'm ever curious about the world. I'm driven to go out and find new things to write about. Having a vivid imagination is also a plus.
Wrote my first "novel" when I was six. Studied a bit in college, but then pursued history... But when I started writing professionally, it was mostly learn as you go.
Before writing, I start with a series of questions, specific things I need to know before I can write the book... That list grows and changes as I do more and more research. But when I've answered the bulk of the questions, I begin to write.
As I write, invariably I encounter more questions and answer those as I go.
I write every day for most of the work day, and I try to write 2,500 words per day... If I don't make it a routine and treat it like a job, I'd never get anything done.
Writing about craft has forced me to think more about my own writing technique, and to break down my process in ways that have been enormously helpful to me.
In the writing phase, normally I try not to envisage any particular actors because I like to let the characters sort of reveal themselves in that process.
For me, directing is like writing with meat. I can write live, in real time, and change things and be confident that I'm helping the movie.
I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.
Zachary Jernigan can't write a bad story. He couldn't even if he tried. Each and every time I start one of his inventive, carefully crafted, thoughtful and mind-bending tales I know I’m in for a treat. This collection is sci-fi at its intelligent best.
It's fun when the writers start writing jokes to you, but also it's fun when the writers will come to you and say 'Hey, listen, we're working on this story and we need to know if you speak any foreign languages.' And I said 'No, I don't. I speak a little Spanish, but I can learn a foreign language.' And they go 'Okay, do you think you can learn Portuguese?' And I go 'Yeah, whatever it takes. If it's funny, I'll do it.' So of course I start looking online and learning Portuguese, and as it turns out, I get the script and it's now Serbian.
In the absence of any written analogue to speech, the sensible, natural environment remains the primary visual counterpart of spoken utterance, the palpable site, or matrix wherein meaning occurs and proliferates. In the absence of writing, we find ourselves situated in the field of discourse as we are embedded in the natural landscape; indeed, the two matrices are not separable. We can no more stabilize the language and render its meanings determinate than we can freeze all motion and metamorphosis within the land.
