Quotes About Writing

In my music career, I never was interested in working and writing and creating songs based on what kind of rewards I could receive in return - a hit song, per se, is what most contemporary artists have to deal with when they deal with a label.

My first publication was a haiku in a children's magazine when I was 9 years old. I received one dollar for it! I gave the check to my dad for Christmas, and he framed it and hung it over his desk.

I've written fiction... but the nonfiction has always received the most attention.

I was halfway through writing a gothic, country house mystery when, out of the blue, I received an email inviting me to audition for the ITV show, 'Popstar To Operastar.'

I don't know how the editors are going to take it or how it may be received. But to some extent I'm hoping that with the next book, when people pick it up and read it, it will scare the pants off of them.

Once 'Walk Two Moons' received the Newbery Medal, I decided to write full-time. Partly because there seemed to be an audience out there who wanted to read what I wanted to write, and partly because I could now support myself financially through writing.

When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.

Friends and family do not believe you write fiction. They truly believe that every word you write is either autobiographical or based on them. I once had a character say that she never wanted to be invited to another children's birthday party, and I never received another children's birthday party invitation ever again.

Six years after I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B,' I received my first paycheck as a writer. It included both the $3,000 in deferred option money as well as half the fee for performing the initial rewrite. The amount was scale according to the Writer's Guild guidelines, but a lot, according to me.

The Strauss allowed me to be a writer. Without it, 'The Emperor's Children' would not exist. When I received the award, I was teaching, had one baby, and was pregnant with another. There was no time for writing.

After my dismissal, I received nothing in writing from Cricket Australia, no contact, and no payment at all, not even of my basic leave pay, until I was forced to bring in lawyers to assist in the process.

You pour your soul into your book, but you never know how it will be received, and when people like your baby, it's a great feeling.

I love doing humorous roles and I write my characters that way. But I haven't received many offers from others to do comedy.

I like writing letters and receiving letters. It's a shame that we've lost the art of letter-writing and saving correspondence. I mourn that.

I think e-mail is kind of a cheap way to communicate. It's a lazy way of writing a letter, you know. I write a letter every now and then, you know, pick out somebody and drop them a line, because I always like receiving letters.

Like many other women, I could not understand why every man who changed a diaper has felt impelled, in recent years, to write a book about it.

Actually, it is a fact that I've been doing more writing than playing in recent years.

My favorite series of 'Peep Show' is always the most recent one, which I can say with all honesty because I don't write it. It gets better and better.

In judging other people's work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions.

I just sit down and write. I never know when. The most recent one is 'Sarah Still,' which is about our life, Sarah and me. It's my favorite of all my poems.

At that time, I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace, which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well, if it was painful to read, it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book.

There's no such thing as the contemporary novel. Before I seem the complete reactionary, let me add that I've happily joined in many discussions about 'the contemporary novel' where what that usually, unproblematically means is novels that have appeared recently or may appear soon.

I use writing as a counselling session - recently I've written a song for Paloma Faith, so after being a singer, I'm happy to keep writing for other people.

I use dull colors in my drawings because I started out using a root beer base, because it seemed like an interesting idea, and when it turned out that it worked quite well as an ink, I started using other colors that would complement it, like grays from Higgins black writing ink and, more recently, Dr. P.H. Martin's olive green and vermilion.