When I go to my live shows it's often a multigenerational audience, a family bonding experience.
I like to go to the beach, have a bonfire, and play music.
When I hear people boo, that just makes me want to go out there and work harder.
I tend to write things and don't go the next step and try to get it published. I don't want to do book signings and stuff.
There are other types of public appearances a writer does in addition to book signings and readings. Each calls for different skills. None of these skills, needless to say, are those that go into writing books.
The most attention I get is in a book store or video shop when I go to the foreign film section. Sometimes that can be fun, but usually those women want to talk about philosophy or something very dense. It's not like they're tearing off my shirt, you know.
I go into a book store and start having heart palpitations. I get very excited.
In late 1999, I was walking down Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks with my late producing partner Sharyn Lane after a day of editing 'Sordid Lives.' We passed the Psychic Book Store and decided to go in and get a reading. We weren't believers, but what the hell? We needed a sign.
Writing is a solitary journey, so I am always excited to go out on book tour and meet readers one-on-one.
For the most part, my characters don't talk to me. I like to lord over them like some kind of benevolent deity. And, for the most part, my characters go along with it. I write intense character sketches and long, play-like conversations between me and them, but they stay out of the book writing itself.
You get a painting idea, and you go do that. You get a cinema idea, and you go in to do that. The difference is, even though the paintings might take some time to make, with cinema you are booked for a year and a half, minimum.
In fact, one was so booked out we went from March and were to go till November, but the pantomime was booked so they transferred the show to the Prince of Wales Theatre because it was so packed out, and it ran on from there.
Here's one of my bad habits: when I go to someone's house, I head straight to their bookshelf.
When you close a tab or when you finish an article on the web, it's gone unless you go back into your history or search for it or explicitly try to find it. Apps on your phone have this special property: they hang around. In some ways, they're more like a book on a bookshelf than they are like web pages.
I'd go to a bookstore, and I'd flip through flap copy, and I'd think, 'If this gal can get published, I can get published.'
Just as we were finishing 'Paul's Boutique' we got our own places, and I was going out to clubs a lot less. I got a bit more introverted and spent a lot more time on my own reading. I would just go down to the esoteric bookstore and wander around.
I read. I order books from the States. I literally go into bookstores, close my eyes, and take things off the shelf. If I don't like the book after a bit, I don't finish it. But I like to be surprised.
Best-selling writers should go to bookstores to say thanks to the booksellers, to meet fans, sign autographs, sign books, talk, whatever.
Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.
You don't get a standing ovation and get boos, by the way. They don't go hand in hand.
