'Scar Tissue' is the only book I've ever written when I've felt completely toxic, ill.
I've been writing since I'm five years old. I've been writing books since high school - junior high, high school. I write every single day. I never thought I'd be published.
I've never written a book before.
As a writer, I think about films I work on in a traditional Hollywood kind of a way. I'm curious to see how it translates.
It was interesting to write ad films and scripts for TV shows before I moved on to writing a feature film. That helped me grow as a writer, and I also found out how long I could sit in front of a computer and see something through.
A lot of first novels are written long before they're actually put down on paper.
To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to be immersed in the world, you have to go out looking for it. This becomes harder as you get older because there's less energy, the days are shorter for older people and it's not so easy to go out and immerse oneself in the world outside.
I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!
You never know what to expect when you're a writer visiting a movie set.
When I was writing my first novel, 'Elizabeth is Missing,' I was writing the only novel I had ever written and writing about the only protagonist I'd ever written about. Because of this, I didn't think of her as a construct. Maud was real.
That's one of the great thing about writing is that you get to be in someone's head.
I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.
I didn't write a ton before 'After,' to be honest.
When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.
One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.
I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn't realized it (the original book) had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.
I am hoping to work with writers publishing books for first time, since I of course remember what that experience is like. It's all a bit of a mystery for new authors who don't know what to expect.
When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!
As so many writers know, the experience of creating an imaginary world is closer to dreaming than it is to normal, grit-your-teeth work. It's preconscious rather than conscious. Ideas fall into your head, and the book writes you, rather than the other way around.
There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels.
I wrote 'Legends of the Fall' in nine days, but I had been thinking about it for a few years.
I love writing with really experienced producers and co-writers who open my mind to things I never would have thought otherwise. We may think the same way about something, but they might say it in a way that I never would have thought to say it.
Reading the final copy of my book was like walking down memory lane all over again. Sure, the writing process was emotional, but when I had the final copy in my hands, it was a completely different feeling.
I started writing poems, and when I first tried prose, I wrote bad articles and essays and columns, and I didn't have a handle on it. I didn't go to a school that really taught you how to write that stuff.
Before I started writing for myself, I was writing country records, and they were coming out dope.
