Every new thing is a result of everything you wrote before.
I was a journalist and wrote about filmmakers, but I didn't review movies per se.
I started putting down my own pen and spending some time searching for the best songs out there possible. It doesn't matter if I wrote them or not.
My father writings stuff was always his personal stuff, like about the day we had to put our dog down, or finding old photographs of his father, or passing a guy he went to boarding school with on a street in New York. Very specific, detailed, descriptive columns that he wrote. I think in a way, it could be argued that my best songs are that way too. They're almost journalistic in that they're very clear, and very specific, and they describe things.
I remember doing "As Cool As I Am" and Steve [Miller], the producer, saying "I really hear a drum loop here. I want to play it for you. " When I wrote it, I thought, "This isn't going to sound very folky. I don't think it's going to go with mandolins and banjos. " Then he played the loop for me and it sounded right.
One day, I got so disgusted that I sat down and wrote a list called 'Justin's list of things to do before he kicks the bucket. ' I wrote it for myself and shortened it to 'Justin's Bucket List. ' It was there on the wall, not as a story idea but as a motivational tool for myself, which actually ended up working pretty well.
So what if someone wrote your obituary. . . that doesn't mean you are obligated to die.
I guess if I wrote a book one day, it would be about hair
I had so many songs that were actually sort of finished. And I deleted them. I wrote on my website that I'd put them on the shelf, but that wasn't true. I actually deleted them from my computer. I got sort of trigger-happy and I think I deleted about 200 songs from my computer.
I wrote the book 'Grace, Gold & Glory' because I had to overcome many challenges and hardships. I wanted to share my story to let anyone facing hardships know that your dream is still possible.
I wrote newspaper articles professionally for seven years, and I love newspapers.
I stay true to my lyrics. If I go back and look at them in hindsight, the emotions I had when I wrote them have passed. It feels unjustified to change them.
In 1966 Rolf Edberg wrote "This is mankind's home", "in the narrow borderland between the deathly heat beneath our feet and the coldness of space above us". He describes the fragility of our existence in poetic terms: "the atmospheric layer is so thin that it cannot be represented on any globe with even the finest brushstroke. At its thickest, it is only a few fractions of a millionth of the Earth's radius. This thin layer is what makes the difference between our planet and the sterile landscape of the moon. " After reading that, one does feel the need to take better care of this fragile layer.
We wrote what sounded good to us and hoped it would find a home.
I think I've been mildly obsessed with my hair. I don't think I have a hugely adversarial relationship with it. One my essay is about my decision to keep coloring my hair once it started to go gray, but once I wrote the essay - once the book was in production - I decided to go gray.
Now, I'll tell you something that might interest you. Casino Royale was the first Bond book that Ian Fleming ever wrote. And he couldn't get anybody to touch it, to publish it - he couldn't do anything about it at all. Nobody wanted to know.
And he wrote, "When the moon rises tonight think of me and I'll think of you.
When I wrote 'Kidulthood,' I didn't even know there was going to be a 'Kidulthood. ' I just wanted to test myself to see if I could write a script.
Here's a little song I wrote. You might want to sing it note for note. Don't worry, be happy.
What you and I might rate as an absolute disaster, God may rate as a pimple-level problem that will pass. He views your life the way you view a movie after you've read the book. When something bad happens, you feel the air sucked out of the theater. Everyone else gasps at the crisis on the screen. Not you. Why? You've read the book. You know how the good guy gets out of the tight spot. God views your life with the same confidence. He's not only read your story. . . he wrote it.