People can be cruel,' he says with a sympathetic look that makes me trust him even more. And right then I realize that he is not writing down all my words in a file, which I really appreciate, let me tell you.
It's easier to greenlight your own films when you're not surrounded by other people aspiring to make films. You have to work a little harder and rely more on yourself and your collaborators and the real relationships you have. There are so many hypotheticals that dominate the industry, and everyone's always waiting for someone else to tell them when to make a film and write a check and sign the talent.
Exposing characters and their shortcomings gives me great comfort. Its always great to write about someone more mixed up than yourself.
Writing novels is where I'm most comfortable. It's a very intimate experience.
I never go online on my iPhone. Sometimes I'm tempted but I remind myself and the kids - it's a tool. Use it as a tool. You're not the tool. My iPhone, 85% of the time I'm writing down ideas.
I don't like writing for myself to sing. I prefer to have other people's voices to dispose of in some way that they'll like or not like or flatter them or not flatter them. It's fun.
"Good" people are those who don't hold in the thoughts, but find proper outlets like writing, painting, music, etc.
I think there are people who do write regionally, because that's their subject matter - the way the sunset looks over a strip mall, memories of flirting at the ice rink, waking up to a deer at the window... Up to now, that hasn't been mine.
I suppose it's useful in designating writing that tends to come from personal experience, work that delineates an "I," but it's a loose lasso, one which may rope certain poems by one poet and not others.
If I begin a poem, "I am a donkey," reason kicks in and says, "She is taking on the persona of a donkey." But if I write, "I have taken so many drugs I can't see my feet," the tendency is to take that as a confession on the part of the poet. Maybe that doesn't matter. I'd almost prefer for it to be the other way round.
I think of poetry as a very inclusive term. Still, it's interesting that people want to make the distinction. I love the magazine Double Room for that reason (contributors have to write about their ideas on the prose poem/flash fiction).
There isn't a grand plan at work in the progression of the books with respect to the line. I do want the books to be different from each other, certainly, but I'm more aware of that on the level of theme or structure. I can tell when I'm writing the last of a particular type of poem because the writing is too easy and I start to feel queasy.
When I start writing a poem, I can usually know quite early on whether it's a lineated or prose poem, but I don't think I can explain how. It's like deciding whether to wear a skirt or a pair of pants.
A lot of people are writing poems and don't realize it. They have this limited idea of how the poem should sound or what subjects it should address.
I certainly believe you can write a narrative lyric or a lyrical narrative - why not a nyric or a larrative?
I write poems from dreams pretty frequently. It's limiting to think the poem has to come from a sensical lyric "I" stating things clearly or dramatically. This whole course is trying to say there are millions of ways to approach writing a poem.
In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process.
Poetic success is when you write a poem that makes you excited and bewildered and aglow.
Usually form seems to find me in the process of writing a poem, though I have nothing against starting out with the form.
Writing a poem is always a process of subtracting: you start with all of language available to you, and you choose a smaller field.
I've never gotten hired for drama because I'm a good improviser. I don't think people who write drama scripts want you playing with them as much.
Honestly I don't like to write songs that often, only when I feel like I need to and when I've got something that I really want to sing about.
I fell like a lot of times, when I write a song, it is coming from an introspective perspective that my faith always kind of factors. Faith is either part of what factors in to my decision making, or it is part of what factors into my fears and my doubts. It is either the positive or the negative part of it that is afflicting me during times of conflict, which is normally when you write songs about yourself when you find some sort of conflict or you are seeking some sort of resolution.
I don't understand why America embraces Lady GaGa and Katy Perry and all of the "pop stuff" as much as they do. The Jonas Brothers, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber are also included, and I don't really get any of that. Maybe that means that I am old. That stuff seems like it isn't that "authentic." Katy has a cool writing style though, and her lyrics can be poignant and mean stuff from time to time. I really appreciate that about her.
I try to be outraged by things that other people are just very accepting of, as though they're normal and can't be changed. A lot of what I write about is, "Hey, you know, this stuff is really awful, and it doesn't need to be, and that's why it's so offensive." Things should be better.