Writing Quotes - Page 577

I never listen to music when I'm writing.

I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually.

By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.

Im really good at writing almost hits.

I start songs all the time. If I weren't so lazy, I would finish them. It's like when I have a deadline I have to. I always feel very lucky that I am forced to make records at certain times. If I was forced to make 2 records a year, I would write twice as many songs. I can't make myself finish something unless I am forced

Writing is the thing that sustains me and keeps me going. It is a form of self-preservation for me.

As a writer, the most important thing for me is to continue to write, no matter where I am.

I'm more critical of my songwriting than anybody, but I've worked really hard in the last five to 10 years to improve.

I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don't usually employ.

Our whole intention was to make a record of songs that we grew up with and change them up a little bit, but we kind of stumbled on writing "Joseph's Lullaby." The irony is when I originally wrote the song, it was called "Mary's Lullaby." I wrote it from Mary's standpoint and it was in a higher key, a real falsetto, and it just wasn't right. One day, the producer's wife said, "Well, it's kind of odd that you're singing from Mary's perspective, being the guy. Why don't you do Joseph?

You have certain writing tools but generally creating something from nothing makes one quite mad and Cynthia and I are quite mad you know.

The only way to raise the quality of writing in school is to create, share, and celebrate the specific criteria for that quality with everybody on a regular basis.

Some writers are curiously unmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them. For me, music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well. Writing and music are two different mediums, but musical phrases can give you sentences that you didn't think you ever had.

Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up.

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

Maybe you could be a great writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write that English paper - that English class paper that's assigned to you.

Days are scrolls: write on them only what you want remembered.

Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing.

Many a man has walked up to the opportunity for which he has long been preparing himself, looked it full in the face, and then begun to get cold feet... when it comes to betting on yourself and your power to do the thing you know you must do or write yourself down a failure, you're a chicken-livered coward if you hesitate.

You have to find a way of shutting the future out and focusing on the writing. One of the problems I'll have with writing my second book is getting back into a situation where I think about the words on the page rather than the publishing industry, or success, or any kind of readership I may now have. I'll have to do what writers do, which is focus on the story and nothing else.

There's been no nepotism in my acting artistic life, but I think it's been pretty clear in my writing life. I knew what a pantoum was at age 11 - I knew form - therefore I would win the poetry contest. But I also realized that I would never be a great writer.

I would like to sit and and write some acoustic stuff. That's what I want to do. It means creatively, that's what I want so I need to do that for myself and then I'll see.