Writing Quotes - Page 895

If I was writing about an academic or a more difficult person, I would use the Latinate vocabulary more, but I do think Anglo-saxon is the language of emotion.

Part of my mind is working on how to end the thing while I'm going on. You need at least two brains to write.

I worked more intensively hour after hour when I was starting out [writing]. More laboriously. I'd say quantity is important as well as quality, and if you're not producing enough, make a schedule and stick to it.

The style developed over decades, really, but I started out writing pretty traditional stories, then became impatient. It was a writer named Russell Edson who showed me that one could write in any way at all.

I would recommend, definitely, developing a 'day job' that you like - don't expect to make money writing!

That's the interesting thing about writing. You can start late, you can be ignorant of things, and yet, if you work hard and pay attention you can do a good job of it.

I think a lot of what goes into writing can be taught - not mixing metaphors, etc.

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.

Because I'm not writing all the time (thank goodness), my mind is sometimes pleasantly blank.

I don't believe a good poet is very often deliberately obscure. A poet writes in a way necessary to him or her; the reader may then find the poem difficult.

There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.

When I write, it's intimate. I write in the car, and I don't even hear, like, ambulances driving past me because I'm in my car, listening to the music, writing. I record in an attic with no booth. It's not like I'm in the dark with candles, but it's like a house, a home, and I record like that. I think that plays into the music.

To me, poetry is a rational act. I never write a poem if I'm not sure what I am going to say or what I want to communicate.

It's just like I get this identity crisis: my body doesn't want to write, my mind doesn't want to write. Nothing about me wants to write, but I force myself to sit there and try. Nothing happens.

The writing about what you know thing was a huge one. Not worrying so much about what people think. Just writing for myself and the band is enough.

I'm still writing songs but leaving them a lot more open and not trying to control every nuance of it.

For one, the nonverbal aspects of music are the most important to me. Then, whatever sort of emotion the music carries, intrinsically, dictates the images that unfold, lyrically. Topical writers usually have the topic before they begin writing the song, but, for me, it's the other way around.

I write lyrics really fast. When it's time to write, I usually put them off until the very end and then when it's time to write I can just sit down: I sing the melody, whatever the melody is, because that's the first thing that's already been there for a long time; I start singing it and I start creating consonants and vowels; then they turn into words; then all of the sudden one sentence will happen; then that sentence will dictate how the rest of the sentences happen.

I don't have to think too hard to keep my writing within a certain narrative thread. That happens because certain words trigger other associations you have in your mind. So, there is this inherent narrative in the end, whether it is abstract or what.

When I'm in writing mode I tend not to listen to music. I usually have a gestation period before I start writing. When I'm listening, it usually happens on the road. So, we'd been listening to a lot of music on tour the year before and all that stuff sank in.

I once made the mistake of writing a story with David Corbett. The man smoked me. He can delineate the character and personality of an accordion in three strokes. I didn't even know accordions had character. This act of generosity and wisdom from a very good writer will help anyone who is staring at a blank page, any day, any time. Highly recommended.

Suppose someone follows the series "1,3,5,7, ..", and in writing the series 2x+1; and he asked himself "But am I always doing the same thing, or something different every time?" If from one day to the next someone promises: "Tomorrow I will give up smoking", does he say the same thing every day, or every day something different?

Im always in that mode - whenever I have a little free time, Im always recording songs, writing, whatever I gotta do. Its like my job is my vacation.

Write backwards. Start from the feeling you want the audience to have at the end and then ask "How might that happen?" continually, until you have a beginning.

The desire to confess ... lies at the root of most fiction writing.