Always remember that if editors were so damned smart, they would know how to dress.
The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.
I am much more likely to care about someone trying to be funny and give them some credit for whatever he or she did that was remotely funny than I am to be mused by somebody declaring this isn't funny, that isn't funny, this sucks. If you want to write humor, you're going to have to get used to that.
There are terrific TV shows now. This is a golden age for TV humor, I think. There's an actual market there. Of course, I have no idea how you'd break in, but there must be a way. They have all these shows and they need jokes and somebody is writing them.
The one thing I'm terrified of trying to write about is sex. I mean my God, my wife might read it or my daughter might read it or my son might read it, so no, I've never really written about eroticism at all.
When preparing your return, you should be sure to avoid common mistakes. The two most common taxpayer mistakes, states the IRS booklet, are (1) "failure to include a current address," and (2) "failure to be a large industry that gives humongous contributions to key tax-law-writing congresspersons."
I don't like anything unsigned in a newspaper that purports to be the opinion of some group if we don't know who the group is. It's laughable to say that The Miami Herald's editorials or any newspaper's editorials represent any views other than those of the people writing them, so why don't we tell everybody who they are?
When I write my annual tax column, some ex-IRS agent will complain, "There you go IRS bashing again." They're always saying that they're just doing their job. Someone I know once said, "You could get another job."
Your job is to give people a reason to keep reading.
The more boring a newspaper is, the more it is respected. The most respected newspaper in the United States is The New York Times, which has thousands of reporters constantly producing enormous front-page stories about bauxite...The [New York] Post would write about bauxite only if famous celebrites were arrested for snorting it in an exclusive Manhattan nightclub.
Many things have been written, including by me, linking humor and pain. Mostly, in my case, the humor part keeps me sane. If I spent all my hours writing things like "Fatal Distraction," I'd become a brooding, erratic melancholic. I'd be Raskolnikov.
Editorials are written by people who have agreed to have several strong opinions a day and to write them down, provided they do not have to sign their names.
I'm a joke comic. I tell jokes. I like writing a joke, and I like when a joke works, and I like other comics who tell jokes.
It's disingenous for me to say that I wasn't trying to write a moral novel. By its very nature as a novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit steps into the political conversation. There's no way to avoid that. I can appreciate that readers are probably going to line up on one side of the novel or the other. I hope they go to those polar extremes, actually.
If Fobbit leaves a reader feeling stranded in some bland in-between territory, then I haven't done my job. But having said all that, I didn't consciously write the book with a particular moral intent. I took what I experienced and processed it through the sausage factory of fiction. It's up to readers to interpret what's on the page - as is the case with any novel.
Try writing an entire story with only a thousand words at your disposal. It’s a terrific lesson in economy and precession.
When you're an artist, your personal life and your professional life kind of blend together. I'm writing from home so I don't have an office or anything. I don't know where to draw the line between "Okay, let's stop now and watch American Idol."
I want to stay in the writing long enough to become a falling star of the up-and-coming genre, then a has-been known only by collectors, and finally a rediscovered artist who is finally recognized as a creative giant misunderstood in his own time. Then forgotten again. But if I get removed from the list, it'll probably be because there are just too many damn good writers out there, and any poll of some assortment of editors is going to come up with an equally valid, equally varied list.
I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.
When you're writing fiction it's a heightened voice. You're trying to cast a spell, which isn't the same thing as trying to cast someone into it. You are creating a reality but it's a different sort of performance.
When you are writing the kind of criticism you hope you're writing, everything depends on keeping your calm or your cool. You're trying to tell someone about something that they may know nothing about. They depend on you to read or interpret as best as you can.
Meddling, smug, stupid little..." "She likes me! They always play hard to get when they like me!" "No. You do not understand. I could not have done it because I can not read or write.
I think there's no purpose for writing music if it is not meaningful.
I'd like to be writing songs for other people - I just like writing songs.
I remember the few times that happened to me in writing, where you basically start writing and you look at the clock and six hours have gone by and you're, like, "Whoa! What the hell just happened?" And that piece ends up in the final product even though the final product is three years away. It doesn't get rewritten. It came out the right way. But that's happened to me so few times in my life.
