I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.
For me, the challenge is just making great albums, because talent - and writing in general - is not tangible. There's no expiration date on it. At the same time, you might wake up tomorrow and be unable to write music.
I can't write story-songs, like I couldn't write a Bob Dylan or Tom Waits song. I can only write whatever weird phrases come into my head, and hope that they're good.
I am a big Brian Eno fan - the first few Brian Eno records are just absolute gibberish and he came up with a lot of lyrics by writing down loads and loads of random sentences and streams, and I find meaning in that music, even though he'd probably say it's absolute gibberish.
I can't write - out of all the things it takes to make music, lyrics are the thing I'm by far the shittiest at.
I try to listen to a lot of music when I'm in the mixing process of a record, when I'm in post-production and trying to get everything to sound a certain way. During the writing process, I tend not to listen to too much music. I obviously wear a lot of influences on my sleeve, but if I was listening to too many records, I would turn into too much of a monkey.
Writing a novel, I am making is an object that has a life and identity of its own, apart from me.
First of all, my wife writes half my act. I don't know how I could "steal" from my wife.
I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."
Weirdly, by the way,[Bob] Dylan also managed to write several beautiful love songs, like "To Make You Feel My Love" (covered by Adele, Garth Brooks, Billy Joel, and who knows who else) and "Most of the Time." Go figure.
Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.
A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.
I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.
I think, when I'm writing, I have a more clinical view than I do when I'm reading. I like pretending to be God and basically determining the fate of my characters. But as a reader, I'm a sucker. I'm very sentimental. I get upset when people that I like die. And yet I have killed off characters in my books quite heartlessly, and sometimes found that readers were very upset by it.
President Bush released his tax returns yesterday. He listed the economy as a liability. He gets to write that off.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has still not officially bowed out of this race. It looks like he's not gonna run. But I'll tell ya, if Arnold does run, he better get on the ballot, because you don't want a write-in with a name like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because people will go - 'Schwarz, schwarz, oh Davis is easier.'
Country music turns the stuff we say every day into a soundtrack...taking an ordinary working man like me into that rough, happy country of longnecks and short tales.
I don't write quickly, and I don't want to.
I really love movie soundtracks and stuff like that. That's really a huge part of any movie. I actually think about... that this would be cool in a movie or something, like when I'm writing a song, or something you know?
We don't work in the traditional TV format where we're like writing concurrently to shooting. Like, we really view it as a large feature film.
I would say that since I was nine years old I've always wanted to write and direct horror movies and action movies. There's never been a time in my life where that wasn't all I wanted to do.
I felt I had a very innocent childhood and I feel privileged by that. But as an adult, I know that there were people who didn't have that. There are a lot of teens who haven't had as easy a childhood as me, and having literature that explores these "darker" parts helps relieve the burden and stress they may be feeling. As a writer, there is often a temptation to draw back when we write for teens - to preserve their innocence. But the reality is, if someone has already had that innocence taken in their life, then not writing about it is just brushing it under the rug.
The young adult literature is relatively new - it just kind of exploded in the 2000s. When I grew up, there weren't bookstores with sections dedicated to teen lit, nor was my generation raised reading books written specifically for us. Because of that, today we still think of books for teens as children's books and so when you write a book that includes sensitive topics, it just seems even more controversial. What's troubling to me about that is these are issues adults know that teens deal with. Not writing about them makes them something we don't, or can't talk about.
I don't know exactly what it is, but it looks like interconnected websites where people show their photos and write about everything going on in their lives, like whether they found a parking spot or what they ate for breakfast." "But why?" Josh asks.
When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.
