Writing Quotes - Page 894

Nonfiction gives you subjects. Writing fiction I can have more fun, but I have to invent my subject.

I had read [Charles] Dickens's novels were often published serially. I thought it would be fun to write a book, just sitting down and writing a chapter every day, not knowing what would happen next. So that's how I wrote the first draft. And then of course I had to go back and make sure everything worked and change things.

Ideas mostly come from the work itself. Often when I'm drawing, the words will be bouncing around in my head, and when I'm writing, ideas about the drawing happen.

I love that when you're writing your mind is sort of figuring things out on its own, without you directing it.

I can connect with whoever I want to connect with in the world. And I can also write my own script. I don't have to follow rules. I can sort of just be unconventional.

I quickly realized that I enjoyed editing more than writing. I felt more suited to it and it fit my nurturing personality. I had lots of ideas and a strong sense of structure, and I enjoyed working with talented writers, relishing the give-and-take in making their work better.

In early 1970, Newsweek's editors decided that the new women's liberation movement deserved a cover story. There was one problem, however: there were no women to write the piece.

I think that when you're first shaping the play and trying to find a character, the initial actors that develop it end up imprinting on it - you hear their voices, you hear their rhythms. You can't help but to begin to write toward them during the rehearsal process.

What I am saying, I suppose, is that you write as if everyone is dead. Then you face the music. I don't know any other way to keep the teeth sharp and the spirit alive.

A writer can't just be well-educated or good at research; to build a living, breathing world with interesting characters, you have to write from the gut. I'm not saying you have to live your life like a fantasy adventure. The trick is the ability to synthesize your own everyday experiences into your fiction. Infuse your characters with believable emotions and motivations. Infuse your world with rich sensory detail. For that you have to be in touch with your own existence and your own soul, the dark and the light of it.

If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer.

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.

I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.

My goal on my bucket list is to write a romantic comedy movie.

You can't know what a book is about until the very end. This is true of a book we're reading or writing.

When I work on a book, I usually start with a question. And I don't sit around and go "I need to write a book. What's a good question?" It will be a question that's just clanging around in my head.

I'm not the kind of writer that can wake up and say, "Okay, I'm gonna write a song today," and have that song be the kind I would want to record. The songs of mine that I end up liking are songs that come from real experience. They're like chapter titles in my life.

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.

It's really a lot easier to write about things that are problematic. Who wants to hear how happy you are?

I had to do this album. I tried thinking, "I'm not going to do it." But then I'm sitting there getting all suicidal and depressed, and I just start writing. It's like this inner drive. If I could choose, I would probably be living in the countryside and be fine with that, but I'm not.

I want to do a stripped-down album. That style is actually where my heart is - storytelling and just letting the voice and the lyrics talk for themselves. I still want to write the perfect song and sing it in the most honest, undressed way. But I feel like I have to gather more experiences and more layers in my voice. I have to live more to be able to tell this tale. So I'm saving my folk record. I have a feeling nobody will understand it.

My idea of making time for myself is writing songs. I never stop beating myself up about trying to be productive, so I don't really like to do a lot of things other than write in my journal and write songs.

My guitar player calls the process of writing lyrics based on another story, "filling up the well" when you can get inspiration from other people's art without stealing, more being influenced by it.

I don't think it's something that people would ask a man. Some people make a huge deal out of the fact that I sing about drinking all the time, but I don't think of it as singing about drinking. It's singing about emotions, and sometimes that centers around drinking. To me, I'm writing about things that I'm going through that mean something to me, but some people just reduce it to: "She must drink all the time." But if a guy sings about that sort of thing, no one really looks twice.