I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career.
I decided to write category romance as I'd recently discovered them, and enjoyed them.
I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure.
I generally write a first draft that's pretty lean. Just get the story down.
I loved the process of writing.
The most important thing in writing is to have written. I can always fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank one.
You can't write well what you don't read for pleasure. If it doesn't entertain you, it's not going to entertain anyone else.
By Cunning & Craft is a masterpiece of writing about writing. If, like Scheherazade, you had to spin out a story under threat of death, this is the how-to book to read. It's filled with thoughtful, nuanced advice from a teacher/writer who actually writes, and writes beautifully and with great humor. The list of rejected stories is worth the price of the whole book.
You don't really have to believe what you write in a blog for more than the moment when you're writing it. You don't bring the same solemnity that you would bring to an actual essay.
You get to be a certain age and you start reading stuff about the age you are, and you think, what is wrong with these people who are writing these books? Do they not have necks?
I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view. I know exactly where I'm going as soon as I have the lead.
Sometimes I suspect that there are two prototypes of philosophers who write about humans - I call them "celestials" and "terrestrials", without implying that celestials have their heads in the clouds or that terrestrials have theirs buried in the ground. The difference between these two types is not so much in their theories but in whether or not they would find it a very sad thing if it turned out that the only way a human is superior to a wolf is this: the human brain is significantly more capacious and complex.
Suppose a student of mine writes in her exam that "morality is completely relative to culture, so nothing is absolutely right or wrong. Because of that, it is absolutely wrong to be culturally intolerant". This student, if she believes what she writes, believes a contradiction. She ought not to believe the contradiction - it's a basic epistemic norm. This is true even if she can't avoid believing it - no amount of studying will show her the light.
I really got to fuse some of my hip hop & R&B background into the Jessica 6 album since I was really hands on with Morgan & Andrew while writing and producing the record.
My first instinct when I write songs is not a negative one. It's something positive... Everything I've ever done has some form of hope in it, I think.
My wife would say I'm not romantic at all, but I would say that I'm the ultimate romancer because I write about... life being brilliant.
It took me to about maybe 16, 17 or 18 or something to realise I was absolutely useless at everything else except for playing guitar and writing words
I just started to write because I was fed up of not seeing the stories that I wanted, so I was like “Stop moaning and write something.”
I don't think I'm egotistical, and I know what my limits are: I'm a black guy who's probably losing his hair. But I'm happy to play roles that I'm given, and I'm happy to play roles that I write.
After Kidulthood, I was called in to a meeting and told that I didn't write women very well. I was very annoyed.
When I wrote 'Kidulthood,' I didn't even know there was going to be a 'Kidulthood.' I just wanted to test myself to see if I could write a script.
As a man - no longer a teenager that can play those really young roles, but as a man - I think I've only just got good in the last three or four years. I only watch my old films because, as someone who wasn't trained, that's how I look at my mistakes; I see something and I go, "Well, that's not good," and I learn from my mistakes. Same with the writing and same with the directing.
When I write a project, it might be something that I want to do and then when I look at it, I'm actually like, "I kind of don't want to direct it." I don't know why, I still love it enough for it to be made and to support it, but I don't want to direct it. I just give it to other directors and they do a good job!
I'm always writing, but directing takes priority over everything, unless the acting is a job that lifts that whole brand. If I get a part in a big film with a big director and I was going to direct one of my one films, I would take the former job because that job will only help anything that I then intend to do. I think in the long run, directing is the thing that will outlive everything else. Maybe that and writing.
I asked my media teacher, "You can make films out of sequence?" and he was like "Yeah! You can do whatever you want." I just started to write because I was fed up of not seeing the stories that I wanted, so I was like "Stop moaning and write something."
