A Quote by Jesmyn Ward
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
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It's important for people of colour to have the opportunities to play characters that are as nuanced - as three-dimensional, as human - as the characters who we traditionally see getting to play the protagonist. The good guys and the bad guys. The reason that is important is because it's a better reflection of the reality of the world we live in.
And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.
I have a really good idea of who my readers are and always write with a sensitivity to my audience. I use the F word when necessary, but there are words I won't use, mainly because I don't like them. I don't write about body parts when I write about sex. It's not about the physiological, it's more important for teens to read about the emotional aspects. I do think there are times when self-censorship is important.
I always wanted to write a book about a common food that becomes a commercial commodity and therefore becomes economically important and therefore becomes politically important and culturally important. That whole process is very interesting to me. And salt seemed to me the best example of that, partly because it's universal.
It's fun for me to try to write concise, compact things. It's a very good exercise for me. And I think it's important to try to do different things - change what I write about, and also the way I write. Otherwise, I'd just be repeating myself, which wouldn't be good for me or fair to my readers.
Perhaps the most important contribution to me being centered in the midst of this chaos is my daughter, Krystal Ann. I am very lucky because she works with me and is responsible for many aspects of the business on the marketing side of my career. This allows us to travel together and experience life on the road, seeing the world. Having family with me is very important and grounding.
For me, there's a bad year of getting started on something. You write bad stuff and it's awkward to throw it out, and you wait around to get some good ideas that maybe do come or don't come. Until eventually you get the voice and autonomy of the characters, the characters have personality, and they sort of pick up the weight and put it on their shoulders. That's when it becomes a little more fun.
People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed.
I can't stress enough how important it is to write bad songs. There's a lot of people who don't want to finish songs because they don't think they're any good. Well they're not good enough. Write it! I want you to write me the worst songs you could possible write me because you won't write bad songs. You're thinking they're bad so you don't have to finish it. That's what I really think it is. Well it's all right. Well, how do you know? It's not done!
I'm very clear about my priorities - quality and credibility is important to me. A film and a character that lives beyond my years is important to me. People's love is important to me.
The art of transformation is a very important thing to me, and I always believe I can say something more truthful through characters that are further away from me.
The idea that we should write towards the unknown aspects of our experience was totally groundbreaking for me. It gave me the license I needed to try to write outside myself. This attitude has deeply informed my approach to fiction, emboldening me to write characters with voices or situations that are vastly different from my own.
Guitar playing is very important to me. It's like golf to some other people; it's important to me that I play good.
I've always had a very extreme personality, which gets me into major trouble, I'm always all or nothing, and I don't know the world "balance." I'm desperately trying to learn it because I think as you get older it becomes very important.
My professional success is really important to me, and my career is really important to me. It's the most important thing to me outside of my family. I take it very seriously and work really, really hard at it. Family comes first, but this is something that's really important to me too.
Most of the time I've worked with directors who write their own scripts. The story is more important to me than the part. The project of the film has always been more important to me.
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