Quotes About Writing

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books.

One reason I find all this character growth and narrative swerving so exhilarating is because I never got to do it when I wrote for TV. Our characters needed to remain consistent from week to week.

I did try to write stories in college because I was interested in writing, and I was interested in the sound of language, but I was just no good at narrative and at fiction.

I knew I wanted to write about a nanny, but it was difficult for me to find a narrative rhythm.

The writing is only ever the attractive thing about a part. And also if all the elements within the writing come together - the character and the structure and the narrative - if they are all there then you become excited.

The script for what would eventually become my first graphic novel, 'Cairo,' sort of came to me in kind of a bolt of lightning within 24 hours of having moved to that city. Just a jumble of characters and narratives and interesting things that I was seeing and experiencing for the first time.

I love writing two narratives! I think concurrent storylines are my favorite way to write a book.

I didn't know how to kill off a character unless I was able, as a narrator, to get really complicated. Because it was a big deal. I'd never killed a character before.

The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it.

I've probably written some books - I know I've written some books that were more interesting to me than to a large audience, but that was mostly when I was first getting started in academia and writing for a narrow audience.

I was writing and playing in California for 11 years before I moved to Nashville.

There was a period when I wrote in Nashville for Maverick and then Warner/Chappell, and it was interesting.

Nashville has become sort of this go-to writing city for every genre.

I wanted to get better at writing, so I knew I needed to move to Nashville.

I became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box.

I was born Chinese, and I write in Chinese. I don't think there's any need to evade this... to a writer, as to a person, what matters is not his political label or his nationality, but whether he is a person and whether his work is worth looking at.

I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.

I would be ecstatic if the very first writer to step foot in a Storyknife cabin was an Alaska Native woman writer.

I think I always knew I would be a writer some day, but it wasn't until I was grown and had children of my own that I turned to telling Native American stories.

Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it.

Everyone says I should write a natural history or landscape book because if I have an area of amateur expertise, it is in those things.

I have always loved writing as it comes very naturally to me.

Writing is the hardest for me. It doesn't come as naturally as the other forms, and I feel far more dread during the process. Acting and voice acting are more mercurial and maybe come a little easier to me.