A Quote by Amy Sherman-Palladino
Writing is a sad process, sitting on your ass for many, many hours, alone in a room, smelling like coffee, sadness and bitterness, and watching your youth leave.
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Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.
To get on a show where you're acting day in and day out for many, many hours - 15-16 hours sometimes - it hones your endurance, your ability to memorize, your ability to follow your instincts, because you don't have time to fret about your choices afterward.
Make sure your characters are worth spending ten hours with. That’s how long it takes to read a book. Reading a book is like being trapped in a room for ten hours with those characters. Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be loveable, or they can be evil, but they’d better be compelling. If not, your reader will be bored and leave.
I was a lot dumber when I was writing the novel. I felt like worse of a writer because I wrote many of the short stories in one sitting or over maybe three days, and they didn't change that much. There weren't many, many drafts. That made me feel semi-brilliant and part of a magical process. Writing the novel wasn't like that. I would come home every day from my office and say, "Well, I still really like the story, I just wish it was better written." At that point, I didn't realize I was writing a first draft. And the first draft was the hardest part.
These are the only two situations possible, and you are in the sad situation. Everybody may know about you - who you are - but you yourself are completely oblivious of your transcendence, of your real nature, of your authentic being. This is the only sadness in life. You can find many excuses, but the real sadness is this: you don't know who you are. How can a person be happy not knowing who he is, not knowing from where he comes, not knowing where he is going? A thousand and one problems arise because of this basic self-ignorance.
Your chemistry with your co-actors is more important in a comedy. You can't leave it to your performance alone. So many things have to fall into place to make people laugh.
Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go,
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,--
There are none to decline your nectar'd wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.
You may never learn the names of any of the people you talk to in a dog park, even after many, many hours spent there with them, and many hours of conversation. But if - knock on wood - anything should ever happen to your dog, these nameless non-strangers will rally, sympathize, offer to help, and hold your hand. I know this from experience.
Sometimes you may feel very sad, because sadness also belongs to God. Sadness is also divine. There is no necessity to always be happy. Then sadness is your prayer. Then let your heart cry and let your eyes pour down tears. Then let sadness be offered to God. Whatsoever is there in your heart, let it be offered to the Divine Feet - joy or sadness, sometimes even anger.
Sadness is poetic. You're lucky to live sad moments. When you let yourself be sad, your body has antibodies. It has happiness that comes rushing in to meet the sadness.
I realized that for many people attending a reading is like watching television at the end of a long day. They don't want to be sad but to laugh. Chances are they'll pick the sitcoms over the horror movies. So I learned that, while one's larger body of fiction can have quite a bit of sadness and conflict and tragedy in it , in a reading environment, the average audience member seems able to tolerate only a little bit of sadness. They'd much rather the reading be sexy, funny, and witty. Life is hard these days. There's more than enough sadness in the world, so I can't blame them.
Sitting in a room, alone, listening to a CD is to be lonely. Sitting in a room alone with an LP crackling away, or sitting next to the turntable listening to a song at a time via 7-inch single is enjoying the sublime state of solitude.
Directing is a very all-consuming job. What you want to do there, as you're coming down the final road, is to just sit back and enjoy and let the wind flow through your hair. When you're directing, you're sitting there going, "I need to make this shot. How many hours do we have left in the day? How many hours behind are we?" You're just constantly worried about doing the job.
If you're going to be a writer, you're going to write because you have to. It's not like other arts and not nearly as rewarding because it's a lot lonelier, and most of the time it's just you alone in a dark room or a coffee shop. But a lot of writers have to write because they're writing for themselves, so whether or not someone sees your work or not- they're still writing because they absolutely have to.
If you have a guru, leave him; if you don't have, get one. In other words, keep changing your gurus! Ocean's wisdom comes from knowing many ships and many fishes, many storms and many waves!
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