A Quote by Donna Tartt
It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.
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I don't even own a computer. I write by hand then I type it up on an old manual typewriter. But I cross out a lot - I'm not writing in stone tablets, it's just ink on paper. I don't feel comfortable without a pen or a pencil in my hand. I can't think with my fingers on the keyboard. Words are generated for me by gripping the pen, and pressing the point on the paper.
First, consider the pen you write with. It should be a fast-writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your hand. You don't want to slow up your hand even more with a slow pen. A ballpoint, a pencil, a felt tip, for sure, are slow. Go to a stationery store and see what feels good to you. Try out different kinds. Don't get too fancy and expensive. I mostly use a cheap Sheaffer fountain pen, about $1.95.... You want to be able to feel the connection and texture of the pen on paper.
We entered 'Lucid Grey' into the Georgetown festival on April 27, 2001. Now 'Sound of My Voice' is opening on April 27, 11 years later. It couldn't have happened in a more perfectly cinematic way.
...so now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, she could return to that dream land, that unreal but fascinating place, the Manning's drawing-room at Marlow twenty years ago; where one moved about without haste or anxiety, for there was no future to worry about. She knew what had happened to them, what to her. It was like reading a good book again, for she knew the end of that story, since it had happened twenty years ago, and life, which shot down even from this dining-room table in cascades, heaven knows where, was sealed up there, and lay, like a lake, placidly between its banks.
I don't write directly on to the computer because I don't think well facing forward with fingers on a keyboard. I think better looking down holding a pen. And the concentration quotient of pen and paper is higher than when I'm moving words around on screen.
Ruminants are a perfectly normal thing to possess when you live in upstate New York. It's just moving scenery. It's kind of like the equivalent of Great Danes. It's the way you keep your grass mowed. It's the way you keep your weed-whacking to a minimum.
I used to write on pads with a pen but had trouble reading the words the next day. Years later, Bob Dylan taught me to just write and write on a laptop computer. Then I'd print that out. When it was time to write a song, I'd go through the pages and sing melodies to words that moved me.
There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.
I either wrote at the end of the night or sometimes in the morning. Sometimes they were full entries, or others I just wrote notes about things that happened that day or funny thoughts I'd had. If I had a truly eventful day, I'd take the time to write it all down in great detail. I edited a lot of content out once it was all finished - there was way too much, and I didn't want to bore anyone. I like to keep the book [Superficial: More Adventures from the Andy Cohen Diaries] moving at a fast pace.
I used to steal pens at the store. Back in the day when you would write checks, I would write a check and use the pen, and I would keep the pen.
I really believe that you grow up a certain way in New York. There's a New York morality, a sense of loyalty. You know how to win and lose. There's a thousand kids outside, you know who to push and who not to push. There's a sixth sense you develop just because it's New York.
It's so weird how that can be, how you could have a night that's the worst in your life, but to everybody else it's just an ordinary night. Like on my calendar at home, I would mark this as being one of the most horrific days of my life. This and the day Daisy died. But for the rest of the world, this was just an ordinary day. Or may be it was even a good day. May be somebody won the lottery today.
When my mother was born on 14 April, he named her after a Latin American holiday, the Day of Americas, that nobody knew about. My due date also happened to be 14 April.
I suspect losing paper maps but gaining GPS and online maps is a similar step function: maps still exist, but they're vastly more useful, not to say permanently up to date, in their new form. Again, I won't be shedding any tears, but I'll keep a paper road atlas in the back of my car for another few years, I think, Just In Case.
When I stopped touring, it was like trying to stop a bullet train or a giant lead ball falling from a 100 stories up - it's momentum and it doesn't just stop. I drew a line in the calendar and made it a brick wall and just stopped dead. There was no other way. It would've taken another 100 years to slow down slowly. I had to let myself imagine a calendar with no lines; when every single day is being predetermined six months in advance, there's no more fluidity to time.
Valentine's day has gotten blown way out of proportion. Valentine's Day just used to be for your girlfriend or your wife but now everyone's like 'Oh, happy valentine's day!' I even got a Valentine's Day card from my grandmother. How ridiculous is that? We stopped having sex years ago!
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