I found this in the August 2nd, 2019, New York Times. Fun reading…if you’re not suffering from reader’s block:
I found this in the August 2nd, 2019, New York Times. Fun reading…if you’re not suffering from reader’s block:
Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.
To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.
It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.
Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.