Quotes About Writing

At the core, I try to write characters who are real people with real insecurities, fears, hopes, and dreams, which is why hopefully readers can identify with them.

I don't like writing with real people in mind.

It's a huge responsibility writing about people who are alive. It's the thing about writing that keeps me awake at night: dramatising real-life events with real people.

I started writing 'God's War' knowing that I wanted to write about real people on a resource-strapped planet at perpetual war.

My joy as a writer is circling around and around and down and down to find out who the real person is.

The real power of comics is writing as you draw.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

A lot of the writers I've known for 20 years, who used to say, 'Maybe they're right - the novel is dead!' - well, now they don't feel that it's necessarily the biggest job or most sacred calling on the planet. But it's definitely a real thing - it's always been here, always will be here, and one might just as well buckle down and get to work.

Writing is a real activity conducted in real time.

We really believe, existing in a climate where comic books and franchises are the order of the day, that new material and writers need to be fostered more than ever. And in the theater and in television, the idea of original writing holds real value.

Deleting 200 spams a day is a drag. And I was checking my email constantly, rather than getting on with my real work, which is reading and writing. Email was becoming a distraction, a burden rather than a liberation.

I'm not good at dialogue. I'm not good at holding a mirror up at a real world. I'm not good at believable characterisation.

When a story is flying along, and I'm so into it that my 'real' world goes away, it can feel magical. I cease to be, my desk and computer ceases to be, and I am my character in his world. Psychologists call this a 'flow state,' and it's better than publication, money, awards, fame.

When I talk with my students, I introduce a process of work I call the three R's: First comes research, then real world exploration, and finally, and perhaps most important, a fact-checking review of all that has been written.

When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I've come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.

I was given the opportunity to write the kind of book that I wanted to write, rather than one that catalogues where I sang and what I sang and what I wore. I wanted to write a book about an American family, the family that has produced me. The longer I live, the more I realise the incredible support and love we were given as children.

I've grown up with a piano in the house, and that's where I started to be able to learn things by ear. Guitar kind of happened, and I was using it just for writing at first. Then, I was writing so much that I began to realise that I knew how to play, and that's when I started getting nerdy about it.

I start writing with an open mind without thinking about genre and realise, only after writing, that it falls under many genres.

I feel very grateful for the way I was brought up. I did not realise it then, but as I grew older and started writing and realised the material that was there was very strong, I felt very grateful that my life was complicated and that my identity was never clear but put me in a position that was always questioned.

Life being so short, and the possible books to write so many, it's good to function by night as well as by day; but would anybody become a writer if they realised at the outset what the working hours were?

When I was little, I thought everyone in the world liked to read because it was so fun. But then I realised that was not exactly true. I want other kids to read and write more all over the world, because it helps them to understand things better.

When I finished 'True History of the Kelly Gang,' I realised that Faulkner had not lost his power over me.

I realised I'd never climb Everest but thought I could still write a book.

When I wrote 'Dear Fatty,' I realised that sitting and writing alone is an absolute joy.