In a poem, the words happen; they just come. I let them. Otherwise, I wouldn't write. To interfere with what is happening is to distort the poem. Just a very small degree of intelligence and supervision is necessary. Very tactful. Any revision later that violates the text as it came, that begins rewriting the words, is fake.
I'm close to my audience. I think I have more tools in my box than other guys who might try it. Also, I know how to do this stuff. I know how to write and shoot and edit. I'm technically adept and that helped with the website. You need a big skill set.
I'm always asked if the songs that I write are therapeutic, and my answer is a quick no. In fact, it could be argued that they exacerbate my neurosis.
I've always believed that there's an amazing number of things you can do through a rock'n'roll song and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat.
What do I do when writing isn't going well? Well, I don't write - which is symptom, cure, and cause. And then sometimes I just tell myself, as I'm writing, "I'll fix it later." And sometimes it's true, I do.
Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a "really great sense of humor" and what now your creative writing class calls "self-contempt giving rise to comic form." Write down all of his jokes, but don't tell him you are doing this. Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend's name and name all of your socially handicapped characters with them. Tell him his old girlfriend is in all of your stories and then watch how funny he can be, see what a really great sense of humor he can have.
Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike.
Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read.
Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, and what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, and what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way; - all this comes of Authorship.
One hates an author that's all author.
I write books because I have always been fascinated by stories and language, and because I love thinking about what makes people tick. Writing a story... 'The Giver' or any other... is simply an exploration of the nature of behavior: why people do what they do, how it affects others, how we change and grow, and what decisions we make along the way.
What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.
The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words.
I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories likes these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.
My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.
Like, I kind of developed my musical style in a vacuum. Even though I listen to a lot of stuff, the way I wrote was in my bedroom, really privately. It's still the way I write, actually.
I don't really have any "must work withs," but I would never refuse if a celebrity or fellow musician came along who is willing to write or sing or play on a Lita song.
The truth is that every writer, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, is trying to write something truly original and that's what I think I'm doing.
The Thickety is a sinister, magical debut with a marvelous and shocking heroine. J.A. White’s elegant writing and masterful plot kept me turning pages late into the night.
Mostly singing was cathartic, writing was cathartic, therapeutic. I don't think I had a goal, particularly, to sing or put it out there for anybody.
My overnight success was really 15 years in the making. I'd been writing songs since I was 6 and playing in bands and performing since I was 14.
One thing I really want to explore is writing.
I wrote for twelve years and collected 250 rejection slips before getting any fiction published, so I guess outside reinforcement isn't all that important to me.
Like the philosopher, the author views his task as one of establishing a clear connection between life and history, and of making the past bear fruit for the present and future.
If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system.
