I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.
I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.
For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.
I always dreamed of writing in an orchestral context. But when you finish a piece, you want to hear it. So we played everything with Phish.
It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.
I studied arranging and orchestration a number of years ago, so I have a home studio and arrange about three-fourths of my songs on the computer. Since writing orchestration is tedious, I often put an arrangement on the keyboard and let someone better-qualified finish it.
I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.
Whatever I'm writing comes organically out of my life.
And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.
I also don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured - since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing - that religion was one problem Pern didn't need.
Very curious, at the age of about 13 years, Oswald began to study Marxism and he kept on in his writing, affirming that he was a Marxist. Probably he did want to show himself as a great, supreme Marxist.
Ottawa is a hot spot of Canadian crime writing, with perhaps the greatest concentration of active, involved, published crime writers anywhere.
I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.
I began writing 'Outlander' in 1988, so the Internet as we now know it didn't exist.
Things we write down are the fragments shored against our ruins. They outlast us, these scraps of words on paper. Like the detritus from the tsunami washing up on the other side of the ocean, writing is what can be salvaged.
I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom.
Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
The characters in my stories all have quite loud lives in my head. It's a relief to get them on the page. Often they come from people I've noticed or overheard - but that is only a part of them. It's only by writing that I discover who these people really are.
When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.
