I will write a couple of books and become a millionaire.
I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.
I don't write because I think I have anything particularly interesting to say. I write because I love writing more than any other work I've done. I do think about entertaining the reader to the extent that I try always to write a book that I myself would want to read, but I don't think it's up for me to decide if what I've written is interesting to others. That is entirely up to others.
I think that I write much more naturally about characters in solitude than characters interacting with others. My natural inclination - and one that I've learned to push against - is to give primacy to a character's interior world. Over the three books that I've written, I've had to teach myself that not every feeling needs to be described and that often the most impactful writing more elegantly evokes those unnamed feelings through the way characters speak and behave.
You had censorship. If you brought a manuscript to the publisher, you knew he would suggest changes. If you wanted to write and speak what you thought had to be written and spoken, you had to act against all these suppressive rules.
Because I work quite slowly, I have to keep myself interested over a long research and writing period. So I can't see myself writing about modern middle-class Londoners anytime soon.
Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.
I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.
Now the writing in the head, I definitely do every day, thinking about how I want to phrase something or how I'd like to rephrase something I've already written.
I never really am concerned about the political landscape of the day when I'm writing because no matter what it is, it will change. By the time my stories come out, it will have changed. So I never think much about that.
I've written so many things over the years that I don't want to go back to being just a scriptwriter. I'm in what I consider to be the enviable position of all I have to do is come up with the idea and write an outline that makes it seem like it's a viable idea that will interest people, and then other people write the scripts -- and I become the executive producer or the producer, depending on how much involvement I have, and I get a creative credit and then move on to the next project.
If nobody is looking for a story, and I have no reason to write a story, I would really much rather to do anything else because it's no fun writing stories, particularly not for me. I just do it in order to sell them and make a couple of bucks.
I didn’t write 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' I’m not even sure who they all are. I can’t wait to see the movie.
It's hard not to be enthusiastic when you like what you're doing and I love what I do. I love writing stories, I love coming up with ideas for new projects and I love the people I work with, because I work with great writers and artists and directors and actors.
Ideally, anything one writes should have a social conscience: if you can write a story that thrills, and with a good message, that's the perfect type of a story.
I never tried to write for other people. I liked people who had problems I might have, because we all have insecurities, regrets. I like heroes who were not 100-percent perfect, who things to take care of.
No matter what you write, it's a matter of putting words in a certain order so that the reader will be interested in what you're writing.
I think I'm always trying to challenge myself. I'm definitely going a new direction and trying to write more concisely, but that's the toughest part for me and I definitely think I'm growing in that way, which feels exciting.
Most of the writing that I do is a complete train of thought process. I'll just be walking down the street or sitting on the toilet or whatever and something will pop into my head and I'll record it on my phone and then over the next little while it'll develop a little more in my head.
When I'm writing, those ideas are seldom inspired by music itself. I won't often listen to an artist and come up with an idea.
I decided to create a really good laptop recording situation and to learn how to write that way, rather than have the perfect stuff around.
I try to not be self-conscious in my writing process.
Normally when I'm writing, in the beginning I don't think of lyrics at all. I'm just improvising.
A lot of the people I was writing with think a lot more about lyrics and a lot more about the details from the beginning. That kind of thinking made me a little self-conscious because I was suddenly having to judge what I was doing early on in the process.
I went to this boy's choir school when I was growing up, and I think that the first time that I consciously started making music was when this one kid joined our class. He was an amazing pianist and would come up with all these ideas. I've always had a really competitive side, so I saw him doing that, and was like, "I have to try writing songs as well."
