A Quote by Alice Mattison

I just like doing it, I like writing. — © Alice Mattison
I just like doing it, I like writing.
Most authors writing books like 'He's Just Not That Into You' dream of doing what I was being asked to do. I didn't like it. I'm good at giving advice, but doing it on TV and radio felt wrong, and when people resisted my point of view, I was like, 'Why am I doing this? This was not the plan.' So I stopped. It didn't make me feel good.
For me, the hardest part is getting up and writing, that's the hard part. I always felt like I could teach someone to direct if I really had to. I feel like it's a skill that's passable, but writing... writing is the worst. That's what I'm doing right now, it's just the hardest thing that you'll ever do.
I like marketplaces. I like train stations; I like being in trains. I like airports. I like walking down the street with a pen in my hand, writing, writing, writing.
You're just like, "I like doing this - it's something I have a lot of passion for." You happen to do it, you enjoy songwriting, and eventually if you're writing enough songs, then you fall into it.
When you're, like, writing a Python script, it doesn't feel like you're doing something to someone. You just don't think, 'How could this actually harm people?'
When I'm doing interviews, I'm doing interviews, and when I am writing, I'm writing. I sit there with a musician and I write. It's the same process since I started writing in my twenties. I like to come in and leave with a finished song.
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing - none of that is writing. Writing is writing. Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
I guess I feel like; if you're doing something and people are accusing you of appropriating something like that so obviously, then I would feel like I've failed as a creative person. It's just like stealing something and doing some sort of slight alteration to it - I'd feel like I'm not doing my job as a musician, or as a creative person - if it's just obvious like that.
Everybody has a job to do, and you just know that every day you have to do what it takes to get there. Of course, everybody has those days where you don't feel like doing it. I'm just like anybody else in that respect. But there's a difference between not feeling like doing it and not doing it period.
I get a lot of 'Oh, you've been gone.' I wasn't gone. Just because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't working and collecting checks. I just wasn't singing and doing videos. I do a lot of other things, like I said, like writing scripts and stuff like that. I write for other artists.
Sometimes you go for weeks without writing successfully, and you don't feel like a writer anymore. When friends ask me how my week was or how I'm doing, I think back on it, and I've just been by myself. Like, I'm just a sketch.
I'm often just writing just to write. I'm not writing with...If I write, like, sitting down with a goal in mind, it's always, like, the worst. It turns into a ska song even if I'm trying to write like a horror movie sound track or something.
And then writing, it was like I just found it, you know? Like you just found your favorite flavor of ice cream, all of a sudden there it is. 'This is what I should have been doing for the last thirty years. What was I thinking?' So I was, then I was in and then I had to just keep going with it.
I can't work out and *not* be watching or listening to music or something. I also journal a lot. I think writing is super therapeutic. And then, hanging with my nieces and nephews. Just like baking or doing silly stuff like jumping on a trampoline, doing fun things with them, pretending I'm five with them, that makes my day.
The biggest idea of a good time for me is making the Batman videos that we did. That is my ideal day. That is exactly what I want to be doing... I like doing cartoons. I like writing things.
Being a full-time musician back before I had my son, it was sort of too much 'me' all the time. I felt like a bit of a narcissist, always doing just my art - even though I feel like artists are doing a service as well. I needed something a little more literal, instead of writing music and hoping people enjoyed it.
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