A Quote by James Lipton
I stopped writing at the age of 18. I had written incessantly before that. I read, of course, because I was in university, but I wasn't going to write. I wasn't going to do any of those dangerous things. I was going to be a stolid, bourgeois lawyer.
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For me, the ages between 9 and 12 were great because it was before you wore any masks, and you had some autonomy in the world. You had some freedom, and you felt you had unlimited ambition. It's when you thought, 'I'm going to write plays. I'm going to be president. I'm going to do this; I'm going to do that.' And then it all falls apart.
Writing is a bit like walking into a big bookstore. It's the bookstore of your brain, and you know you're never going to read all those books. It makes you happy you're in the bookstore, and you're nervous because you know you're never going to read all those books. So the nervousness is also happy. Once I get going writing poetry is one of the happiest things I do, but it is also fraught with all of these anxieties.
One of the things about what . . . I do - writing plays - is that a poll is not taken before you say, Well, I'm going to write this because I think that you're going to like this and therefore you'll buy a ticket for this.
If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.
When I've acted, and it's not been something I've written or have had at least a hand in writing, I do think there is a controlling side of me that is frustrated by that. And I actually don't think that it's a bad thing, because if I'm going to be in movies, in large part they're going to be movies that I write.
I don't think about the reader in any conscious way that impacts the writing, as far as, Hey, most readers would like this! But at the same time, if it were presented to me: "John, you're going to write a novel. It's going to take you a few years. When you're done with it, there's a law that no one's allowed to read it." I don't think I would write it. I want someone to read it!
I don't read a lot of the sports, because I think people sometimes either build it up, or you have this guy that hates sports that is going to write bad about it, so I figure I'm not going to read it. Because I'm not going to let him put an idea into my head.
When people asked me what I was going to do when I grow up, I always said, 'I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to write screenplays. I'm going to write books. I'm going to write plays. That's what I'm going to do.'
I knew I wasn't going to write a record as soon as I got signed, because I hadn't had any life experiences. I was still at school, and I wasn't going to write about that.
Well, on that day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard, really looked like a hippie…Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with nutritional value…Then a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.
You're writing for some version of yourself. You're writing the kinds of things that you like to read or wanted to read at a certain point. So, primarily for most of my career, I've written the kind of criticism that fascinates me. The things I discovered the things that get me going, that I'm excited about.
There are people who are trying to write history for the general reader who can be quite tedious. That said, I do feel in my heart of hearts that if history isn't well written, it isn't going to be read, and if it isn't read it's going to die.
I actually hated dancing. My mum used to have to bribe me to go by buying me things. A year before I stopped going, I was going to go for an audition with the Royal Ballet. It turned out I was a year too young. Because I was tall, they thought I was older. But before I had the chance to go back, I quit.
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.
Something that I've told all of my young artists is, there are going to be haters. You're going to read things that are going to hurt you. It's not going to make any sense. Just know that it's out there and that it's really easy to just press 'delete.'
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.
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