Re Writing Quotes

I started writing songs when I started learning guitar.

I don't really pursue writing songs for other people. I guess one of the things I always think about is a good line in a song should be something I can hear myself saying.

Writing fiction is fundamentally an irrational act.

You have to go where the good writing is.

Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn’t make you good. Writing badly does.

I love 30 Rock. It's one of my favorite shows. It's certainly the gold standard of comedy writing.

The democratic race is really boring when the media is basically writing stories and spending money to ask questions in a poll about somebody who is not even a declared candidate.

Our minds simply don't function in some sort of narrative chronology. I think that one of the great gifts of writing fiction is being able to think about that.

One of the remarkable things about love is that, despite very irritating people writing poems and songs about how pleasant it is, it really is quite pleasant.

I started writing stories as a child.

Writing grew out of the pleasure of escape. My novels are very much outside of my personal experience. That is why I love writing fiction. It allows me to leave my existence and inhabit other lives.

I don't see myself directing things I don't write because, to me, directing was just an extension of the writing process.

I'd like to be writing songs for other people - I just like writing songs.

I think there's no purpose for writing music if it is not meaningful.

I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.

I worked at magazines for over 10 years before I even thought of writing a book.

I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them.

The best writing advice I ever got was "Keep moving forward, don't retreat into rewrites." The worst came from a book that said "Writing fiction is like telling lies," which just seems stupid to me.

I spent seven years writing The Free World. There are a lot of things I accomplished there that I'm very proud of, but I didn't want to spend another seven years writing a book like that.

For a long time, I saw writing prose as chewing rocks compared to the velocities of writing poetry.

When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign for me.

I would love to see writing taught online because at university like Yale, there are not enough teachers who are able to teach writing well, or in some cases, there are none.

Fiction writing feels more honest to me.

…she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same — you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again.

My kids don't really like when I sing for some reason...but they like when I play guitar. So I started writing songs just playing guitar for them.

I'd always been really intimidated by prose writing.

My days are filled with work I love - reading poems, writing poems, talking with people about poems, teaching, directing a writing program, hosting readings, etc.

I'm enjoying writing songs that are more stripped back.

I haven't ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult.

I don't read a lot of inspirational books for life. But for writing, I think the two best books are The War of Art and William Zinsser's On Writing Well. I read a lot of classics.

I don't think writing fiction has changed my worldview.

Avoid theatrical flourishes - the phrases that sound so damned good that they stand up and beg to be recognized as "good writing," and therefore must be struck from the text.

My writing process is ritualized and monotonous, but there's no other way to get the job done. All other fiction writers I've met say the same thing.

Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence is always beautiful at such times.

Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same

I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind.

I think the culture can absorb so many people writing poetry and trying to earn their living in poetry.

And when I'm writing well and when I'm inside the feeling, then I can do fairly complicated things with some fluency.

After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.

Creative writing and shooting are muscles that atrophy. But when you work them, you become a self-generator who can branch out.

You can't improv off of bad writing. Then you have to actually create your objective, which is really hard to do in an element without the skeleton to go off of.

You can't be wrong in journalism. Take a wrong turn in journalism, and you are writing fiction. You can take a wrong turn in poetry, and something wonderful can happen.

You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.

Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.

These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story.

I think when I was younger I was not very good at writing love songs that didn't have a twist.

Nonfiction ties your hands a bit, and just like writing poetry in rhyme, it can force you to make more brutal decisions in terms of word choice, plot, etc.

When I went to school, I was already reading and writing. In fact, I was offended that the other kids couldn't.

When I feel like every day when I get up I'm writing songs, that's the time to make a record.

Writing music is always really helpful for me. It always reveals to me how I am feeling.