The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing. ) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
Writing for me is an ongoing practice of facing and countering fears. And so, in that sense, I have always been responding to phobias. I am often most surprised by the writing that comes from facing fears that strike closest to home, poems that explore internalized phobias about gender identity, sexuality, and the body, poems that struggle with a question like do I deserve love?
Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.
I published my first book in 1982 - a collection of Irish folklore called Irish Folk & Fairy Tales. It is still in print today. My first young adult book was published a couple of years later, and I've been writing in both genres ever since.
I don't start a novel until I have lived with the story for awhile to the point of actually writing an outline and after a number of books I've learned that the more time I spend on the outline the easier the book is to write. And if I cheat on the outline I get in trouble with the book.
I am very bad at remembering the books I've read and so recently I had a wonderful experience. I decided I wanted to teach Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. I hadn't read it in twenty-five years. I was surprised to find how much I drew from that book. Stole from that book, learned from that book about writing. I had forgotten and there it was. Morrison has called that text faulted. I cannot see how.
Weirdly the writing experience has not really changed that much except it used to be that I was busy because I had to work a couple of jobs to earn money, so I didn't have time to write.
The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio. . . well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else. . . My state of being has been elevated, because I've been exercising, writing songs. . . No masterpiece ever came overnight. A person's masterpiece is something that you nurture along.
Out of all the artistic things I do, music is the most rewarding because it's so hard to write songs.
If you use the original World Wide Web program, you never see a URL or have to deal with HTML. That was a surprise to me - that people were prepared to painstakingly write HTML.
If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it.
He that would earn the Poet's sacred name, Must write for future as for present ages.
If you took love out of the equation, I wouldn't know what else to write about.
I write because I love to. I'm very, very fortunate to have found something that I love doing that also earns my living. But to be honest, I'd write even if I weren't being paid to.
Being a creative person. It's so much more rewarding when you find things on your own, to live whatever the writers are writing or to display what the director is looking for. You are the thing that everybody uses to get the story out.
Often you will find the opposite situation. The author seems to have interesting ideas, but he is not able to illustrate them with decent examples. If a grandmaster is commenting on one of his own games, then there is usually not any problem: his general thoughts are closely tied up with what is happening on the board. But as soon as he starts writing an article or book on a different theme the difficulties begin, as he may not have suitable material to hand.