I'd gone through the ups and downs and curveballs that life throws at you. I found writing to be very therapeutic and it helped me with a lot of the stuff I was going through.
You're there right through the match, thinking all the time, making it up as you go along. We don't have anybody write our scripts. You're basically presenting to the people watching at home off the top of your head.
The biggest downside to being a novelist is writing the novel.
I think it's important to let each thing you write teach you how to write it. You must listen to what you do. Let it be in control. I don't step in until I know what it demands of me.
I would enjoy venturing into music, as I do write songs and compose music! And, of course, dance, rhythm and performance are in my blood, so eventually I see myself doing something in that area, surely!
In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response.
I dream of writing a book like LOVERS some day. It is so spare but so rich. It is history made intimate, and a masterpiece of compression.
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
I don't really get hate mail, which surprises me, but people have better things to do than to write hate mail to somebody who writes a book about hating everything, I guess.
Writing for chamber ensemble is the thing that excites me the most. So when I went down into the cistern, I didn't know that I was going to make a record based on that time and those improvisations. But as soon as I started playing music down there, I realised that it was going to be something significant for me.
It's kind of like being a writer in the sense that you always hear other writers say, 'Well, the best way to start writing is to just start writing.' The same goes for improvisation. You want to start improvising, just start playing notes. And the more you do that, the more comfortable - or not comfortable - but I guess how you're able to adapt to situations. You become more familiar with your instrument. As soon as you have a musical thought, you can go ahead and add to that musical thought and know your way around.
With my career, everything I do is me. There's no one that handles telling me what I should be about or how I should dress or anything. I'm hands on with absolutely everything. When I'm writing a song, I'm already thinking of the visual for the song and I'm already thinking of what I'm going to wear in that visual and what I'm going to wear when I perform. It all goes hand in hand. Everything I do is just me expressing different sides of myself.
I think I have patient fans that want quality over quantity. It's more important to me that the project be the best that it can be and the realest it can be rather than rushing a whole bunch of generic songs, because I could do that. I could just put together some songs real quick that I really like. I only write and I only sing for a purpose, so if its not then, it's not going to be rushed.
We know how to work certain toys, and if you've got something in your head you know how to get in on tape, even if it's got an abstract sound to it. We are kind of producers as well as a band, so we're a self-contained unit. We can produce our own record as well as write it.
Writing with privacy is paramount. You must feel free to admit to yourself your deepest, darkest secrets and true feelings.
I personally feel the most vulnerable when I write. That's where I learned to tell the truth when I was young.
I didn't mean to be a songwriter; I just was writing for fun, you have all day to do it. I was homeless so that's all I had to do.
I don't exist without writing.
I'm so hard on myself that when I'm in the studio, I'll write 10 songs and only use one. So those nine songs that are left over, I always think, 'Where could these go? Who could they be for?'
It's weird because when you initially write a song, you write it with no understanding that the world is maybe going to hear it one day. So when you go into the studio, you don't see the hundreds of people at a gig or the viewers on TV, you just write a song without any inhibitions or boundaries.
Lately, I'm thinking a lot about, in parenting and in my writing, how to create a language about sexism in a way that is attractive and approachable to this age group. I can teach my daughter about not talking to strangers but I can't teach her about how to succeed in a sexist world or even how to exist as a body in a sexist world. I want to begin by asking girls what they want and why they want it? Interrogating that. If this is the sex life you want, what makes you think you want that? I imagine the only way to authentically get at sexuality is by asking those questions.
There was no real strategic decision about editorial tone. It was kind of a write whatever you want to write, and we'll see how it goes. I think that we lucked out in that all of the women who started writing at Feministing.com were really funny, and I don't think that's something people are used to seeing or hearing when they read feminism. You know, you think feminism and you kind of think academic, women's studies, dry, humorless; there are all of these stereotypes that go along with what feminist thought is and what feminist writing is.
I certainly wouldn't be writing books if it hadn't been for the feminist blogosphere, and I think that's a really amazing thing.
I know I certainly wouldn't be writing books if it hadn't been for the feminist blogosphere, and I think that's a really amazing thing. And just the sheer power of outreach I think is incredible. It used to be that if someone was to get involved in feminism, it was probably because they were already interested. They were already interested in feminism; they were already interested in being an activist, and they found their way to like a NOW meeting or to a consciousness-raising group or something like that.
I write the word solitude on my wall and then below it: Do you know me at all? Are my words just air? Is my heart easy to spare?
