Quotes About Writing

I'm not a polemicist; I had no business writing a polemic.

'Police Story' had some of the best writing on television, and one reason for that is because most of the scripts were based on real cases.

I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.

Years ago, when my attempts at a writing career came to a complete stand-still, I applied to the Los Angeles Police Department. This might seem odd for a liberal woman who once went to UC Santa Cruz, but I've always had a powerful fascination with crime and serious interest in finding different ways to contend with it.

Five hundred words a day is what I aim for. And I don't go on to the next chapter until I've polished and polished and polished the one I'm working on.

The second episode of any new show can be tough. You have about a week to top the well-crafted and polished pilot episode that was written over six months.

I've polished up stories for their reprinted appearances. I guess there's always something to be changed or improved, but one could get carried away and work on one story indefinitely. I'm too restless for that, too eager to begin the next one.

Be aware of who in your life is actually interested in hearing you discuss your writing, and who's just asking to be polite. Listening to writers talk about their work is often excruciatingly dull.

I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?'

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.

The way I work: I pick a country. I learn the political history - I mean I really learn it; I read until it sinks in. Once I read the political history, I can project and find the clandestine history. And then I people it with the characters.

You put these politicians in office, but then you've got to tell them what you want them to do. And it's intimidating to most people. I was intimidated by it. I mean, calling my senator or writing my senator? I'm like, what do I say? What do I do? But we're showing people that the political process is actually less intimidating than we think.

I'm not a big fan of journalism schools, except those that are organized around a liberal arts education. Have an understanding of history, economics and political science - and then learn to write.

I think women do write politically all the time. Margaret Atwood does; Doris Lessing does.

I am political. But not politically active. I'm not my dad. I'll never write polemic, as he did.

One's politics are part of one even when one is writing. But if I want to say anything about the state of civil society, I will write an essay. The responsibilities you feel as a novelist are literary ones, I think, not civic ones. And I think politicians are interesting to write about.

My dad and I compete on the pool table; that's the most important competition of our lives. The fact that I'm writing and it works for me is one of the great joys for him. We talk about writing, and it's great.

Excuse my scribbling, it is late, and I have a poor candle.

It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written.

What offends me more than something sexist is something poorly written or unfunny or cliched.

You had to read what I wrote if you lived in L.A. in 1975 and cared about pop music.

I've done bits of writing for other people but when I'm writing music as Years & Years, I'm using my life and my stories and my experiences. I want it to be authentic and real but also to work as a pop song - I never want to just put in a cheesy line.

I need all of my songs while I'm writing them, because I need to get the stuff out of my body and out of my brain. I write out of necessity, not because I want to be a pop star.

When I was writing the first few books, what I would do is write a bunch of sentences and then go back and expand and explode those sentences, pack as much into them as I could, so they'd kind of be like popcorn kernels popping... all this stuff in there to make the writing dense, and beautiful for its density.