What's the challenge in writing a novel that few people will read? I'm more than happy writing what I do and have no plans to change that.
I don't write romance novels.
As I write, I am struggling with the ghost of someone I loved and lost. I now understand more fully the difficulties you were going through, and I realize how painful it must have been for you to move on.
In all love stories the theme is love and tragedy, so by writing these types of stories, I have to include tragedy.
Too many writers think that all you need to do is write well-but that's only part of what a good book is. Above all, a good book tells a good story. Focus on the story first. Ask yourself, 'Will other people find this story so interesting that they will tell others about it?' Remember: A bestselling book usually follows a simple rule, 'It's a wonderful story, wonderfully told'; not, 'It's a wonderfully told story.'
You can't be a writer if you don't write, it's just that simple.
I write 2,000 words a day when I write. It sometimes takes three hours, it sometimes takes five hours.
There's always pressure, a great deal of pressure, when writing, since my first books were so successful.
Dramatic fiction - William Shakespeare made his biggest mark writing dramatic love stories.
I don't write fantasy, I write reality. Also, my novels have roots to Greek tragedies and as such, there has to be tragedy.
I love experimental writing, when it's good, and good examples are much more likely to be found in the short form.
The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.
Increasingly, those who used to teach and write critical or theoretical texts are writing fiction, poetry and so on; and kinds of texts are being produced that call for budding readers rather different from those who studied literature in the past.
Whether in peaceful trade or warlike attack, the sea unites more than it divides. Even if it were possible to treat England, or the British Isles, as a single, homogenous, united nation, it would still be impossible to write its naval history without reference to the histories of the other nations, near and far, with which the sea has connected it.
Giving the kids a programming environment of any sort, whether it's a tool like Squeak or Scratch or Logo to write programs in a childish way - and I mean that in the most generous sense of the word, that is, playing with and building things - is one of the best ways to learn.
Writing and directing your own film, for me, has been the best experience of my life.
One of the fascinating things about early writing on slates, on papyrus, even on early handwritten books, is for instance, there were no space between the words. People just wrote in continuous script.
You could perhaps better tell the story of a place by writing of a tiny village as a sort of prism into the bigger issues the culture was facing. It struck me as a better way to learn about a place, or at least a different way, than just going to interview the president. So I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there. But I'm just amazed.
Write letters to your editors, write to your members of Congress, and write to your news stations.
In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different ideas I had developed, and the pilot for True Detective was one of them.
If I write scripts that nobody likes, I don't think we'll be doing 'True Detective.'
I read The Conspiracy Against the Human Race and found it incredibly powerful writing. For me as a reader, it was less impactful as philosophy than as one writers ultimate confessional: an absolute horror story, where the self is the monster.
Now that I'm experiencing motherhood, I'm ready to write the next chapter of my family story. Of course a few jaded folks in the press corps will claim I ran out of money or just want to kiss John Corbett again. One of these things is true.
I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit.
When you suffer, you can look deeply at your situation and find the many blessings that are already surrounding you. It is wonderful to sit with a pen and paper and write down all the conditions for happiness that are already there, already available to you right in this moment.
