People think I write fantasy, but I don't; some things may be exaggerated or distorted in the same way that painters distort and alter things, but they're realistic figures. They're perfectly recognisable.
I remind myself that no one day of writing matters all that much. A story is built somewhat like a stalactite - one little drip of mud and grit at a time.
Be a collector of good ideas. Keep a journal. If you hear a good idea, capture it, write it down. Don't trust your memory.
Good fiction must be entertaining- but what makes fiction special- and True- is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.
Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.
I went through a big Alice Cooper phase, which was probably a major influence on my writing style later, especially after Plastic Surgery Disasters.
I labored for eight years thinking that I was writing a book for adults that was a nostalgic look back on childhood. Then my publisher informed me I'd written a children's book.
When we started writing this kind of music in the beginning, I didn't think that many people would listen to it, but over the years our fan base just kept growing and growing. Now, it's like we do it for us and our fans.
Second, we're spending a huge amount of money on technology so that everyone can check out laptops and portable phones. We're spending more money to write our existing information into databases or onto CD-ROM.
I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write.
I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort.
My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.
Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.
Man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance. Neither his destiny nor his duty have been written down. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.
Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that.
The best way to send information is to wrap it up in a person.
I never started from ideas but always from character.
I had three choices: to conform to my own beliefs, which meant death; complete silence, which meant another kind of death; to pay a tribute, a bribe. I chose the third solution by writing The Long Winter.
It's the writing that teaches you.
If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.
I put my energy into writing songs. I have to carve out a living somehow doing this, and licensing is one way. It's hard to register what's "too much" for other people. I don't watch TV, so it's tough for me to gauge. I just take it as it comes, and don't put a whole lot of thought into it.
If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain. By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren’t disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks.
Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, “Science for Science's sake” is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts, since they are practically infinite in number. We must make a selection. Is it not better to be guided by utility, by our practical, and more especially our moral, necessities?
You write your life story by the choices you make. You never know if they have been a mistake. Those moments of decision are so difficult.
