Writing is not some quiet, closet act.
What is the impulse that drove to direct? To me, it seems so immense. Just having a rock 'n' roll band, or to go from the solitude of writing and to having to collaborate, is almost schizophrenic.
I'm very comfortable writing in the first person; it dives into the character in a way that's difficult if you're writing in the third person.
Songwriting can be cathartic, but then you just keep it private. If you're going to play out and have other people listen to you, then you need to make sure there's some point to what you're saying.
The one good thing about a movie and music and stuff like that: Sometimes it's a counterpoint between the movie and the music itself, the difference and the tension they build together. I think that could be something that helped with me, because when I write songs now, I write lyrics a bit like that. I try to make the music be an interesting twist on the lyrics and help tell the story in a - I don't tell crazy stories, you know? So a lot of times, the twist is in the subtleties. The twist is in the way the story's told.
As long as I don't have an idea, I won't write anything.
I really think you cannot ever escape your history, what you've done, who you are, and things you've tried to hide. Even if no one ever finds out the secret you're trying to keep, the cost of that keeping has been so great, that it's destroyed you anyway. In all my writing, there are people who desperately wish the past is not what it is.
You need to realize that most writing rules aren't laws, they're rules of thumb.
I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to follow your initial [writing] plan too stringently. A story needs room to grow and evolve.
Writing a good query letter has very little to do with writing a good novel. But if you can't write the one, it makes it really hard to get the other published.
I love worldbuilding. It's as much fun for me as writing itself. It's like a hobby of mine.
The thing that helps me do a good job is that I don't feel the need to explain everything about the world to my reader. I'm not writing a history text on the Four Corners. I'm telling a story that's set there. The setting belongs in the background for the most part, and it's easy for fantasy authors to forget that. That's one of the unfortunate parts of Tolkien's legacy, in my opinion. Read the first hundred pages of the Fellowship of the Ring and you start to get pissed, "Shut up about the Shire's museums! Isn't the world supposed to be in peril or something?"
Now that I understand how publishing schedules work, I can understand why many authors have the sophomore slump. A year is a long time to wait for a sequel, but it's a short, short time to WRITE a sequel.
If you're going to have a book full of clever people and nobody ever jokes, it's just not going to ring true to the reader. That said, humor writing is the hardest kind of writing there is.
Sometimes when I get up after writing, I'm surprised at how my body feels. Suddenly I'm not a lanky, hungry young boy any more. It's no fun putting on ten years and fifty pounds all of a sudden. Other times, I get up and I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm not a weary innkeeper, hopeless, with bones that feel like they're made of lead. I really sink into the characters that I write.
I have a blog where I keep in touch with my fans. I write about things that are important to me. Sometimes on there I'll just tell a little story about the things that happen in my everyday life. People seem to enjoy them well enough.
Sometimes I go outside after a long stretch of writing and I'm surprised it's not raining. Or that it's daylight. Or that it's not the middle of winter. I don't know if that level of immersion is normal, but it's now I do things. I like it. It works well for me.
I don't think people need to know much about me to understand the book, or to enjoy it. The book stands by itself. Over the last several years, my life has been all about writing these books, but the books aren't about my life.
Now the truth is, writing is a great way to deal with a lot of difficult emotional issues. It can be very therapeutic, but that's best done in your journal, or on your blog if you're an exhibitionist. Trying to put a bunch of *specific* stuff from your personal life into your story usually just isn't appropriate unless you're writing a memoir or a personal essay or something of the sort.
Most games follow a real railroad plot, no matter what you want, you're following their storyline to its unavoidable conclusion. I'd like to write a game where your character can follow any number of possible story arcs and sub-plots.
For me, language is something that I've always loved. When I read, that's what I look for. When I write, that's what I strive for.
I'd love to take a stab at writing videogames. There are a lot of storytelling opportunities that really aren't being taken advantage of in that field. I'd like to experiment with telling a truly non-linear story.
You can't write good characters if you can't imagine what it's like being in another person's skin. And if you can imagine that, you naturally want other people's lives to be better. You want to make that happen.
I really enjoy work to a purpose. Maybe that makes me kind of strange. In some ways - and this is going to sound awful - it could be that writing is the worst job that I've ever had. Because it's so much more important to me and there's so much more opportunity for failure and I have so many people depending on me. In some ways it's the most satisfying, the most gratifying, and the most rewarding job I've ever had. But I actually would say it's probably the worst job I've ever had too.
It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.
