There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.
I think it's very hard to write things about being joyful. I find that quite difficult. I think when you're happy, you don't want to write songs; you just want to enjoy being happy.
I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
My message to anyone who's afraid that they can't write music when they're happy is 'Just trust the passion.' The passion can write a lot of things.
The main thing is to write for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast. You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. Take off from here.
Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.
I like making things. I enjoy putting words and images on a blank space. There should be joy in the writing itself because parts of it are so challenging and lonesome. I take great pleasure in reading, researching, and interviewing. I enjoy forming my sentences and revising them to make them clean.
Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.
It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that the world is there to be celebrated by writers, and in fact this is what all the good ones do, and that the great fashion for gloom and grimness was in fact a false path that certain writers took, I think in response to the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century.
I thought, 'There are a lot of poets who have the courage to look into the abyss, but there are very few who have the courage to look happiness in the face and write about it,' which is what I wanted to be able to do.
Sometimes, you want to write how you feel, but making people have fun, that's part of it, too.
I want to write something that celebrates life, that's fun to listen to.
I always talk to my students about the need to write for the joy of writing. I try to sort of disaggregate the acclaim from the act of writing.
When I had the idea for 'Shopaholic', it was as though a light switched on. I realised I actually wanted to write comedy. No apologies, no trying to be serious, just full-on entertainment. The minute I went with that and threw myself into it, it felt just like writing my first book again - it was really liberating.
I need to write to be happy.
I usually write about what makes me feel good.
Keep it kickwriting at all costs too, that is, write only what kicks you and keeps you overtime awake from sheer mad joy.
I think my books are lighter and funnier than some of the big series out there. You may not walk away from my books having learned a life-altering lesson, but you will feel better for having laughed for a few hours. It's just a different style of writing.
The beautiful thing about writing with the person that you love is that when they come up with an idea that is great, it's this dual happiness because that's the partner and that's such a good idea, and I'm proud of you, and then also I'm really excited for the project.
I find it incredibly difficult to write anything that's really happy.
I like to be happy when I'm writing. If not, then how will the reader manage?
I very much enjoy writing about positive, direct emotions.
I write just knowing that I enjoy writing. But if I have to write, it seems like nothing comes. But when I go there for my own pleasure, the Lord might just give me loads of stuff all at once.
What could be more exciting when the writing is going well and things are falling into place? It's just like riding a fabulous wave for a surfer. There's no better place to be.
I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.
