I do keep a tiny little journal in which I write passages that I read and want to hold on to. This practice is sort of the opposite of Twitter.
My journals were a clearing house - a garbage can. Once I was writing seriously, I understood that this was the stuff that didn't belong in my work.
When I was growing up, I had no idea that I could possibly become a writer. I wrote endlessly in journals - a practice I maintained for a long time, well into the writing life I had no idea I could ever have.
The Internet and all its lures are much, much harder than anything I've ever encountered. If you're writing on a computer, the very instrument you're writing on is already tainted by the world out there in all its permutations.
When I was writing my first novel, I smoked cigarettes. And when I think about what it was like to smoke, I remember exactly the feeling of sitting in front of my big old computer in that little room where I wrote my first novel.
Our minds simply don't function in some sort of narrative chronology. I think that one of the great gifts of writing fiction is being able to think about that.
I never troll for material. It simply presents itself, and is always unmistakable. This is why I want to roll my eyes when people interrupt themselves in the middle of some story they're telling me to say, "You know you can't write about this."
I was in my early thirties writing about my early twenties, so there was this way of seeing my younger self from enough of a distance to have perspective but also not to feel that I had to protect myself. My dreams for myself then would have undersold myself in a way.
Everything I know about life I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write.
There are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.
If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.
Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.
I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.
It's essential to have sacred time for writing. All successful authors have some daily commitment to keep on-track and moving forward.
If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.
If you think your demeanor is mellow or not particularly charismatic, the material can life you higher. So write everyday, and get onstage or in a coffee shop where they are doing open mice, anywhere you can perform even if that means starting your own open mic night - and be your own self.
I'm sure that people who have been tweeting funny things have ended up on writing staffs of a late night show.
My advice is: to try and stay really true to the things that make YOU laugh, as opposed to trying to create a character that you think is funny. Some comedians get into bad habits when they are trying to create something that is not them, and they are trying to write a voice that isn't their true voice.
I'm willing to write a check for $10,000 if someone can bring to me what I fell is ruining thousands of lives, destroying lives everyday. And I know that you know it's a little thing called Chupacabra.
I love writing for other actors, women of African descent and people who are generally underrepresented.
The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes to write it.
I want what I write to be deeply engaging and strange and true.
When I write characters, I need to hear their voice. As soon as I get them speaking, and I feel how they use language, I understand who they are and what they want.
I do want to write about social/cultural/historical context. I'm interested in relationships, in character, but within a specific social context. Which is kind of a political thing, I admit that. But it's what I'm interested in, and it's how I believe human behavior is legible.
I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.
