Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What is the character trying to say? Why? Be as specific as you can, using sense images that evoke something about the character. Try using the character's senses, even if the character is you.
Most people quit. If you don't quit, if you rewrite, if you keep publishing in fancier places, you will understand that "What's the secret?" is not the question, which is, "Are you having fun?"
I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
I begin every novel with the vow that I will not write about technology, Catholicism, or Hell. As you know, I end up writing about all three. They just happen to be personal obsessions of mine.
Suppose we think while we talk or write--I mean, as we normally do--we shall not in general say that we think quicker than we talk, but the thought seems not to be separate from the expression.
No matter that I have inhibitions enough to fill all my pockets; I keep trying , hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed.
There is probably some long-standing "rule" among writers, journalists, and other word-mongers that says: "When you start stealing from your own work you're in bad trouble." And it may be true.
All of a sudden Mindy [Kaling] was writing on The Office and had sold a TV show. When we'd try to write shows, we'd jokingly call the word documents "Hit Show." We just couldn't crack the code.
When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
I used to go over to my friend's house and we'd watch VCR tapes, three of them a day, and I was like, "I could come up with better stories than this." And I've wanted to write films ever since.
I do realize that the reader needs some form of resolution. Sometimes I think of it almost like writing a musical score where things have to harmonize and certain lines have to come to a close.
I had no idea, when I was writing early on, that my poems would be published or read by anyone, never mind people I knew or would meet. I just wrote urgently - naïvely, I suppose, looking back.
Everything starts with writing. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you've gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them.
Writing, of course, it's not all in your head. Not talking about the 'manual' act of typing here either, but that, when your fiction's really working, your whole body's involved, and then some.
Not merely can people like me write things that would never have been printed before but I think an enormously dramatic change has taken place in public opinion, possibly for the wrong reasons.
A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.
You get used to the exact amount of space between lines. You write a word and then you write an alternate word over it. You want enough room so you can read it, so the lines can't be too close.
The thing I respond to the most is just great writing, interesting characters. I like to think that there is something fun about playing a character that has a lot of authority in her own life.
I used a video camera, and shot on film cameras at school and stuff, but I had a lot more training as a writer. I kind of live like a writer. I get up and I write. I've done that my whole life.
Sometimes you spend nine months, 10 months, a year writing a piece that you will hear two years later or something like that, and you never see anybody. It's a very different sort of metabolic.
Women's books are kind of discriminated against. If a man writes a book about his family stories, people think of it as literature. If it's a woman, she's 'spilling her guts,' and it's not art.
I think writing is really a process of communication. . . . It's the sense of being in contact with people who are part of a particular audience that really makes a difference to me in writing.
It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.
Without writing, what would I have become? Nothing. In China the individual used to be treated as a screw or a small cog in the revolutionary machine. I wanted to be a human being with a voice.
I think that's what I love about writing, is the ability to try to, in a sense, take a vacation from yourself and try to enter the sensibility of another time, another character, another place.
I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
It is only through having a stable loving partnership that I began to feel in control enough to attempt a strict writing discipline, to realize something I always knew was simmering underneath.
I always think its easier for me to write without thinking about the strict meter that's required for songs and song structures and things like that. It's much easier to just write on the page.
I spend a lot of time preparing. I think a lot about what I want to do. I have prep books, little notebooks in which I write everything down before a sitting. Otherwise I would forget my ideas.
When I get sent manuscripts from aspiring poets, I do one of two things: if there is no stamped self-addressed envelope, I throw it into the bin.-If there is, I write and tell them to f**k off.
When I write, I don't translate for white readers.... Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we're able to read him. If I'm specific, and I don't overexplain, then anyone can overhear me.
The first law of history is to dread uttering a falsehood; the next is not to fear stating the truth; lastly, the historian's writings should be open to no suspicion of partiality or animosity.
I think in the old days, films really went for the shock, with the blood and guts, but movies are getting better. The writing and directing have improved a lot, because the audience demands it.
Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.
And inasmuch as the bridge is a symbol of all such poetry as I am interested in writing it is my present fancy that a year from now I'll be more contented working in an office than ever before.
Most writers I know move back and forth between the rational and the intuitive, though there are some who approach writing very rationally, and others who claim not to think their work through.
I've been having a lot of fun exploring different aspects of filmmaking, like writing and producing. There isn't a specific plan and I usually don't know what's going to be the next thing I do.
While I'm playing baseball, I'm still writing songs and having tapes sent to me. I'm sure I'll spend a lot of time in the whirlpool resting these tired bones, so I'll be thinking of music then.
If I have to write by a certain time, I can pull through, but usually I just let stuff happen, hanging out with comic friends - or bringing a basic idea on stage and seeing if it goes anywhere.
If you can discover what you like, if you can discover what you truly believe about most of the major matters of life, you will be able to write a story which is honest and original and unique.
The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out.
At least I'm at peace with myself. I have done my best to write a book about what really happened there and why it happened and it's done, it's published. I won't write another book on Vietnam.
If you're reading something from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist next to some guy in his underwear writing in his basement, or his mom's basement, on text, it looks like it's equally plausible.
I still get up every morning at 4 A.M. I write seven days a week, including Christmas. And I still face a blank page every morning, and my characters don't really care how many books I've sold.
I don't sing melodically. Rhyme pattern is how I sing. I also write like a lyricist or an MC because that's what I was before I was a singer. I just took those elements and put them into music.
Comedy, although it is not one of the fine arts - it's a vulgar art, it's one of the people's arts, it's the spoken word, the writing that goes into it is an art form - it's certainly artistry.
I've had trouble being in relationships and writing. This has been a real problem for me. I don't know if it's because I'm not free to fantasize or create these fantasy things about other people
I decided that if I was never going to sell anything as long as I lived, I might as well do what I want to do 'cause then at least I would've done what I wanted to do in life. What's that worth?
If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want.
The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.