I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music.
As opposed to a movie [Real Steel] where everything feels fantastical, it was really important to me, and I recognise it's not the first movie with robots in it, but that blend of naturalism in performance, writing and design with the futurism of this sport. That was the idea.
When you're (traveling) with someone else, you share each discovery, but when you are alone, you have to carry each experience with you like a secret, something you have to write on your heart, because there's no other way to preserve it.
I didn't to be like, "I have to write a new album. I need to get creative."
My idea of what's good and bad and right and wrong is maybe greyer than most, and I like writing about that.
It's hard if you're just touring constantly. It's like, "What am I going to write about? I'm in the van, I'm playing another show..." I'm still writing about heartbreak that happened years ago. I don't see the point of writing and putting out another record until I can do something else.
I was in musicals and I was in the choir when I was younger. Before I started writing my own songs I thought I wanted to be on Broadway, but it was nothing I ever really pursued. So this was pretty out of the blue.
I guess I usually write when I'm in a really intense headspace, because it's my form of self-therapy.
My mom used to ask me when I was gonna write a happy song. I still tell her that it's when I start to write really happy-sounding songs that everyone needs to start worrying.
As for me, I rarely write a song. But when I do write a song, like "Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects," which came to me at three a.m. one morning, on a whim - I get a percentage.
There are lots of actors, and you need a way to stand out. Writing comedy sketches was a way of doing that.
Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing—and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.
I don't want to because boys don't write poetry. Girls do.
Once 'Walk Two Moons' received the Newbery Medal, I decided to write full-time. Partly because there seemed to be an audience out there who wanted to read what I wanted to write, and partly because I could now support myself financially through writing.
I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.
When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.
I never have the feeling that I actually know what I'm doing or anything that I'm writing is any good.
I am very into genealogy and heritage, and that's how I started writing.
I'll tell you what I was most surprised to discover about my writing process, and that is that I never know what I'm doing.
I personally love books that make me think, so I naturally gravitate toward writing a book like that, one that's going to make someone think and make me think.
I hated the culture [working in the bank], I hated the work. I very quickly realized that this wasn't what I wanted to do. So, after two years, I took some writing courses - I always loved to write - and I figured the only way I was going to get paid to write was in journalism.
I hated the culture, I hated the work. I very quickly realized that this wasn't what I wanted to do. So, after two years, I took some writing courses - I always loved to write - and I figured the only way I was going to get paid to write was in journalism. I really wasn't very involved politically with anything up until that point. Then I started reading about the second Palestinian Intifada, and I spoke to friends in activist and journalism circles. Then, somehow by complete luck, I ended up at Democracy Now.
Write this: Since my boy is the coach, I'm going to try out for the Dolphins next year. Tight end.
I would want to travel the world and write about it. To be a famous writer.
I cannot write to anyone outside myself--if I tried, it would be a horrible story, flat and lifeless. I write to myself. That's the only person I'm trying to please.
