Quotes About Challenge

It's a terrible poison, writing.

Every so often when I'm writing, a character might actually be a distinct person in my head - often not an actor or a face, literally a person who just seems to exist in my imagination. Then the challenge is finding somebody who is close enough to that to make me feel like I've ended up where I wanted to be.

Singing, writing songs, is kind of my biggest fear, but it's the thing I feel I need to conquer.

Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game, that would unlock Tolstoy-mode, enabling me to crank out canon-worthy novellas before lunch.

If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.

The important thing is not to be too comfortable when you're writing. Noise in the street? That's good. The computer goes down? That's good. All these things are good. It has to be a little bit of a struggle.

I'm always writing from some difficult place and seeing how the character survives... or doesn't.

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

There is something unwholesome and destructive about the entire writing process.

As for my writing process, there is one truth I have discovered after writing some twenty-plus books: Not every book is the same, but the middle of every book is where I really begin to question my choice of vocations. The beginning and end is usually fairly clear to me, but that middle just sucks the life right out of me.

I'm not a poet. So the writing process is a difficult one for me.

I was actually sacked from my first job. It was at a workshop for a short film this poet had written, about when she used to work in a strip club. After the first week, I was told not to come back.

I have written and said countless times it is not what happens to you in life that makes a difference! It is how we react to what happens to us in life that creates our history and - more importantly - our future!

Everybody faces a blank piece of paper, no matter what they've written or painted or composed before. I can't imagine approaching every single new project with-without doubt.

'Appetite for Destruction' was the only thing written with lyrics and melody fitting the guitar parts at the same time. After that, I got a barrage of guitar songs that I was supposed to put words to, and I don't know if that was the best thing for Guns.

Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down.

Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.

Like 'Metro' and 'Motor,' 'Troublemaker' is written in first person. The only narration that happens is Barney speaking to the reader/thinking in her head. First person was a big challenge in the graphic novel because we want both men and women of all ages to enjoy 'Troublemaker.'

First and foremost, telling historical stories is very tricky because it is something that is known. It is not like you can tell a lie or change something that is written in black and white.

It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.

I was pretty dreadful on my first night as an announcer as back in those days the scorecards were written in a very strange way so that didn't help and some of the fighter's names were unpronounceable.

With 'Broadcast News,' it became a non-issue, and with 'The Piano,' it became a non-issue. Both parts were written for more statuesque women. It was nice to change people's minds about that, because that's neither here nor there.

It's much harder to act poorly written material. It's much harder to memorize poorly written material.

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.