While I was there, I was just gathering images and names, and ideas and rhythms, and I was storing all of these things - which I didn't realize I was doing - but I was storing them all in an attic in my mind somewhere. And when it was time to sit down and write songs, when I reached into the attic to see what I was gonna write about, that's what was there.
I can picture certain things in my mind, while writing the script, but then I can also tell that everyone else might be a little confused about what it's supposed to look like at the end of the day. But it all works out. I find a way.
I like to get produced. I'm not saying I write to be commercial, I mean "Hazelwood High" they light a girl on fire, so it wasn't the most.
I just started to want to be more hands on, and again, because of the nature of this job which was to evaluate the writing apart from the production, I got clear on what a director did and I became interested in directing, so I started to do that in the late 80s.
It took me seven years of writing before I published my first story. And then, the publications trickled in over the next five years.
I have an MFA in writing. It is debatable if they are right for everyone, but I had a mentor who really changed my life, so it worked for me.
I'd say the music influences the writing - the music and rhythm of the prose - much more than the writing influences the music.
I do write, I enjoy it. But I like acting. I wanna be in front of the camera as much as I can as long as I can, so I'm still pursuing that. There's just a lot going on. I write standup, so it's just a matter of time. I just need more time!
Actually, if I had to do it over [leaving the show the West Wing], I'd do the same thing, because lost in the shuffle of it is that Aaron [Sorkin] left the same year I did. And I would not have wanted to be on The West Wing with somebody else writing it.
[Bad Influence]was David Koepp's first big screenplay. It was actually a writing sample that was around town to get David work at the time, and Steve Tisch - now the owner of the New York Giants - found it, loved it, and together we put it together. But I'd say that would be the one I'd tell people to go and look at if they haven't seen it.
It's rare that I'll write lyrics first. If I come up with some good lyrics, I'll write them down and try to use them later. If I come up with a song title, sometimes I'll write a song based on that. Sometimes, I'll make a whole band out of it. I don't really have a process, per se. I just keep going and going and going. Every free minute I have I'm working.
During a lot of years I would write music while playing video games at the same time.
I touched an Oscar once. Friend of mine has one, for writing. As soon as I touched it, he said, Now you'll never win one.
It started off for me as just wanting to be an actor and sort of resenting in a weird way being expected to write as well as be a comedian and an improviser. And then you think about it for a minute, and I smartened up and realized that the only way to sustain a career is to generate your own material. Or to be in control of your career as best you can. And in allowing yourself to do that it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And then you're like "Oh, producing is a thing."
I really think of it - acting and writing and producing, whatever - as shipping. You gotta ship. Put the widget together in the easiest, quickest way possible and ship the product.
I've always defined myself as a writer, I've never decided what it was I was gonna write. [...] I always fancied myself one, but I'm not. I'm so far from a writer.
The "Kumulipo" is an old Hawaiian prayer chant that poetically describes the creation of the world. The word literally means "beginning-in-deep-darkness." Here darkness doesn't connote gloom and evil. Rather, it's about the inscrutability of the embryonic state; the obscure chaos that reigns before germination.
To me some of the greatest writing is when somebody puts something in words that you felt and experienced and you go, that's it.
Most of the songs I write just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.
As a writer, I am just an actor in a play, telling a story that needs to be told.
Men who write love letters don't live in this century.
I earned two Emmy nominations for writing, and two of the shows I had written were nominated for best in their category.
If critics want to help me, let them come sit next to me while I'm writing.
I write poetry. It comes naturally to me, but from a technical point of view it forces me to pay close attention to language and to scan.
I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
