From time to time, I've experimented with sculpture or metal design. It's a good break from just sitting behind the keyboard.
I plan to retire at 50. When I'm done, I ain't touching no more keyboards.
I don't write listening to music, and in a way it seems silly that any writer should have to explain why not, as it's possibly no different from saying you don't eat gourmet dinners or play tennis while you're at the keyboard.
I think I was told numerous times in the industry that nobody wants to watch a guy on a keyboard.
Twiddle-twiddle away at my softly clicky keyboard for a while, making twiddly adjustments all along- and then print what I have twiddled. Glare at the printout and snarl and curse and scribble almost illegibly all over it with a ballpoint pen. Go back to the machine and enter the scribbles. Repeat this procedure until I hate the very meaning of every word I know.
I deliberately keep myself apart from a lot of stuff; I don't Tweet, I don't do Facebook, I don't blog, and that's largely because I spend my working life staring at a screen and hitting a keyboard, I am trying to cut down on that, not increase it.
This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.
It's not easy to strap yourself down to a desk and bash on a keyboard when you know you can direct lots of films, because directing films is fun and interactive and gregarious. Writing isn't.
Every so often, I'll get an idea from a dream, but most of the time, ideas come to me while I'm toiling away at the keyboard just like every other writer.
It is horrible to sit in front of the keyboard and write those scenes because you're losing too. You lose somebody you enjoy working with.
