That is what diminishes the artist and his song. The artist is now hermetically sealed. The publishing company got him his deal and they expect to profit from his songs. So what if he is a better singer than a songwriter; let's put him in a room with a real songwriter. Something great is bound to come...except very often nothing great comes out of such contrived match-ups. Nobody knows where a great song comes from, and that's why so many writers credit the Lord as a co-writer (though I notice they never offer Him half the writer's royalties) when they come up with a real gem.
Especially on Broadway, composers and lyricists fretted over their creations, obsessed over every rhyme, every critical chord or interval. The stakes were so high. On Broadway, people were watching and judging, especially newspaper critics who knew a thousand ways to slice and dice a songwriter for the entertainment of hundreds of thousands of faithful readers. There was no anonymity for the Broadway songwriter. Even the best could find themselves stripped naked the morning after by the tastemakers and their readers.
[Non-performing songwriters] climb the mountain the first time, take their successes in stride, and when they tumble down the mountain, they just consider the tumble part of their profession and don't even waste time mourning their slump. They continue to write, make new connections, and move forward toward a new round of success.
In Nashville, there is a historic tendency to work the lyric to death while settling for music that works. In pop or rock, it can be the other way around.
I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched, because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.
You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.
I think anyone who writes suspense fiction and says that King isn't an influence is either lying or being foolish.
What I love is the writing, it's not having written. I like the process of it.
I started writing as soon as I started reading.
Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself.
Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don't want to read.
With writing music and writing songs and recording music and coming up with stuff, you need to kind of reengage that kind of inner child to come up with interesting perceptions.
I have a very healthy appetite for good writing and good characters. Having weak writing is my biggest fear.
This book is entirely dedicated to my wife, Robin Sullivan. Some have asked how it is I write such strong women without resorting to putting swords in their hands. It is because of her. She is Arista. She is Thrace. She is Modina. She is Amilia. And she is my Gwen. This series has been a tribute to her. This is your book, Robin. I hope you don't mind that I put down in words How wonderful life is while you're in the world. --ELTON JOHN, BERNIE TAUPIN
I don't keep up with it all. But Taylor Swift writes songs about everybody she goes out with, right? What a way to build a career.
Kids love to be silly, they love to laugh, so I think it was natural for my kids to like the sort of books that I write - and it's the only kinds of books I'm capable of writing.
The characters that I have on Twitter have very little resemblance to me, the person who's writing them.
It's such a deliberate thing to sit down and write a tweet. You're putting yourself out there in a very deliberate way, and over however many tweets, you start to create a character for yourself.
By the end of the time I'm writing a book, I'm tearing my hair out and I want to go do stand-up. And then I want to do something else. I don't know why it is true with me that I can't just be satisfied doing the one thing, but I'm constantly flitting from one thing to another.
I think writing for anybody helps you order your life. It helps you arrange your emotions and your thoughts and it helps to provide perspective.
My process is surprisingly straightforward. I find myself with little to do over a stretch of time and I say, "I should write children's books today." Then I sit down and write a children's book, and if it takes more than, realistically, three hours, I feel like I've done something wrong.
Amateurs write when they are inspired. Professionals are inspired when they write. This is a subtle but important distinction.
Basically, unless you're willing to write down debts and save the economy, you're going to have deflation and a steady drain in purchasing power - that is, shrinking markets.
We're in a chronic debt-deflation. There's no way we can recover unless you write down the debts. And that's what the IMF basically is implying (and it was explicit regarding Greece), but its not spelling it out, because that's not what can be said in polite company.
Throughout history, the only way of restoring stability is to write down the debts. That is treated now as if it's something that can't be done. But it's the only thing that's going to revive the economy.
