I think anyone who has had a fight and who's a very good observer of the situation and people's behavior is capable of writing a fight. But you do start thinking about writing during the fights that you have with your partner.
I would assume that there is a greater amount of joy for you in being able to write and help produce your own stuff and make a decent living, but not get rich versus always doing the other stuff that you don’t write, and make more money.
The fuzzy boundary lines between different readership ages have always puzzled me, so these days I just write what comes, and assume I can fix the mess later with an editor's help.
I'd decided to write him and tell him to leave me alone. Please, in a nice way, go away, I really can't deal with you.
In a way I do hate the process of writing. It's like learning a role where you never think you're going to be able to conquer it when you start and it just takes enough focus and narrowing and getting enthusiastic and not losing it and so on. It's never good enough, but you aim for something and you hope it comes somewhat close. But it is a pleasure once you have written it.
I do ask myself sometimes, what am I doing writing about animals that talk like we do? But I guess it's okay if it brings across a point.
I'm never lonely when I'm writing, because you live with the characters that are so alive in your mind. And you really see them and know them and get to be friends with them.
When I start to write, I see my stories as a kind of movie. For instance, I ask myself, "What kind of opening do I want for this book?"
These days, people like me who are in the arts are perceived as celebrity writers. That really makes me angry because I expend a great deal of effort and spend an enormous amount of time on my books. And I've been writing now for 35 years.
All I care about really is writing something worthwhile for children, something that will engage them in some way and stimulates in them a sense of wonder.
It was quite a process to narrow more than 400 columns down to 80. I write weekly, though, and I don't always write about President [Barack] Obama, so that was the easy elimination.
As I write in the book, I do not regret either of my votes for President [Barack] Obama, nor my support of him when he ran for the Senate before that. I get excited as I ever did when I see that black man on Air Force One. But I won't settle for symbolism, and our President's record should be open for analysis.
Writing is a solitary occupation, and we like it that way.
Bev Pettersen writes with flair and a down-to-earth warmth that will make you smile and sigh with contentment.
I'm really loving acting. I want this as a career. I'll still write music and collaborate with people, but I'm focused on the acting path.
Literature has done great work for feminism - writing and reading are a practice of empathy - and great literature will continue to do so.
You want the greatest trick for writing a novel? Here it is: imagine urgently whispering your story into one person's ear - and only one. This one visualization will clarify every word choice you make.
I don't know when I'm writing dark. I don't know when I'm writing funny or even heartbreaking. I'm always just trying to write it true.
Sometimes when reading aloud to my husband, I'll start crying. It completely stuns me. As if the words in my body and on the page - in relation to each other - are cocooned against my own feelings about what I'm writing until they're loosed in the air and become their own. Then I realize what I may or may not have done.
One of the reasons I write in different genres is that I get to have the feeling - even fleetingly - that I'm not just writing like Baggott again. I can escape myself.
I didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself.
I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.
I was born in the era of the novel. I've written many, as well as collections of poetry, and essays for mouthing off. I've written to inches, word-counts, page-counts, even the sonnet and the screenplay (which I call a plot poem). I write narrative. That's it. I just want to tell it.
Writing across genres has made me more prolific. When one is fighting me or simply not cutting it, I turn to another.
Try to think of writing as a gift - more complexly put: it is the curse and the cure.
