The most important thing is you can't write what you wouldn't read for pleasure. It's a mistake to analyze the market thinking you can write whatever is hot. You can't say you're going to write romance when you don't even like it. You need to write what you would read if you expect anybody else to read it.
One of the first jobs I did was a commercial, a local commercial on the Chinese channel here in Los Angeles, and the whole thing was in Cantonese, I think, and I didn't have any lines, but I was kind of the focus of the commercial.
I did not want to write a story about the invasion of Earth, so I had to create a race capable of living nearby, which meant to either on the Moon, on Mars, or on Venus. I picked Venus.
Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.
Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.
Nothing is so unpredictable as a throw of the dice, and yet every man who plays often will at some time or other make a Venus-cast: now and then he indeed will make it twice and even thrice in succession. Are we going to be so feebleminded then as to aver that such a thing happened by the personal intervention of Venus rather than by pure luck?
By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing - which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring.
I don't write jokes first. I write down topics. I think of what I want to talk about, and then I write the jokes - they don't write me... And even if you don't think it's funny, you won't think it's boring. You might disagree, but you'll listen. And maybe even laugh as you disagree.
The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there.
I've said before that when you win, people think it's so easy, but it's not so easy to handle it, and probably I expect myself to always play so good.
People expect a lot from a commercial director. It's not right to always expect another 'Viraasat' from me.
I understand that computers, which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet, offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing, however it may appear on the surface.
I'm a commercial director; I do some very very commercial stuff in the commercial world. My music videos are always analyzed. I need to think about what the audience is going to think.
I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life.
I wake up every morning bolt upright, whether it's a commercial, not that that's a good thing or a bad thing, because I shoot commercials in between movies. But whether it's a commercial or a movie where I'm shooting a major train wreck, the thing that worries me most is when I'm doing a performance thing.
I write literary, not commercial, fiction - or so I've been told by my publishers who are proud I write literary fiction but secretly wish I wrote commercial.