A Quote by Andy Rooney
It's not so much that I write well, I just don't write badly very often and that passes for good on television.
Related Quotes
Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.
The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but they are not writing. You know, they really badly want to write a book but they are not writing it. The only advice I can give them is to just write it, get to the end of it. And, you know, if it's not good enough, write another one.
I could never write about the sort of people John Cheever or John Updike or even Margaret Atwood write about. I don't mean I couldn't write as well as they do, which of course I couldn't; they're great writers, and I'm no writer at all. But I couldn't even write badly about normal, neurotic people. I don't know that world from the inside. That's just not my orientation.
We're [writers] all afraid of writing badly, and there are psychological reasons, like the bad interior of ourselves is somehow being revealed, but we all fear that, and you can't write well if you're not willing to write badly. That's why you have to make writing a habit, so it feels normal and not strange.
You've got to write badly. If you write badly at least you've got something to rewrite. If you're scared to write badly, then you've got nothing.
Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.
I only write when I'm angry or sad, so because that's when I just have to write... If I'm having a good time and I'm happy and things are going really well, why would I want to stop what I'm doing to go and write at the piano?
If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate.
I might not write fiction in the literary sense. But I write very well. My characters are good. My dialogue is good. And my stories are really involving.
We all have time to write. We have time to write the minute we are willing to write badly, to chase a dead end, to scribble a few words, to write for the hell of it instead of for the perfect and polished result.
If you have five weeks to write an episode of television or seven months to write a movie or several years to write a book, each of those things is going to be better than a live television show.
You have to write badly in order to write well.
I have tried to write soundtracks, and the main problem with those was that the directors often had in their minds a much stronger sense of what they wanted to hear, than what I was willing to give them, and I guess there was no way to say, "Well why don't you write your scene around my music?" Because that's just cocky and awful.
I don't have personal experience and knowledge about anything but theater. I've been tutored very well on the subject, but ultimately I'm going back to the rules of drama. There are genres that I like as an audience member that I can't write as a writer. I can't write crime, and I like a good thriller as much as anybody.
A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.
I like to go out and write. So I'll often go to a Starbucks or a local coffee bar, and I'll sit there and I'll write. I can write pretty much anywhere.
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