Rae Dawn Chong Quotes

I don't dream about the perfect script, though I check my mailbox every morning.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.

Writers write. Dreamers talk about it.

I can't remember what my first script was.

Usually with me, the ideas I have for movies just sort of pop into my head. I've read a bunch of screenwriting books over the years and, to be honest, they're mostly pretty crappy.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

I sort of love reading the scripts and going, 'Oh wow, what a great idea. I never would have thought of that.'

I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

When you're writing fiction or poetry... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.

To be a dramatic writer takes hard work, talent, and discipline. And that's why I just make up crap.

The best ideas are those that really affect me emotionally - those are the ones you never forget. You think to yourself, 'I want to write that book', for years; those are the ideas that I love to work with, and 'The Bone Garden' was one of them.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

I've written plenty of scripts that sucked.

I write about people I think are interesting, and then I discuss it with my editor, and she decides if she thinks it will be interesting to children as well. If I have no great interest in the subject, I find the work to be terribly boring. And if I find the person interesting, I love the research part and, by extension, the writing as well.

Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead.

I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'

It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it.

One thing I always did in my career was writing. I always was writing. I was trying to create things. For myself, for other people.

I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten hours a week writing. The writing is going on all the time in my head; the trick is to capture it. Showers are great. Traffic jams are great.

My aunt got me interested in journalism - she found an old typewriter, had it worked over, put it on the dining room table, gave me a stack of paper and said, 'Play like you're a writer.'

I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find the time to write it.