A Quote by Joshua Cohen

The Internet makes the writer work harder - I have to say things here I've never said before, or else be caught out in repeating myself. — © Joshua Cohen
The Internet makes the writer work harder - I have to say things here I've never said before, or else be caught out in repeating myself.
I never want to repeat myself. I can't imagine anything else as upsetting as realizing I'm redoing something I did before. For some reason, when it comes to film, I'm very good at not repeating myself. Even though in the rest of my life, I'm constantly repeating my mistakes.
Each novel is harder than its predecessor because I must work harder at not repeating myself. However, I enjoy the challenge. This is the greatest job in the world.
I put a lot of pressure on myself to figure out what to say and, lately, I've started trying to work through things in my head. Before, I wouldn't trust my instincts or what I wanted to say and I really struggled with what I wanted to say. I guess it's just the classic case of writer's block and learning how to work through that. I'm slowly learning how.
That taught me how to work harder. I learned all about mental toughness on the practice field. If things weren't working out for me in high school, in college, early in my pro career, my solution was always to work harder and internalize. That way, whenever I got an opportunity, I was always prepared. See, there are a lot of guys who are all talk. They say they want to work harder and be the best, but they never pay the price. I love paying the price.
There are things one does not say for a long time, but, once they are said, one never stops repeating them.
After every fight, I knock myself down. I start from scratch again. I say, 'I'm not as good as I thought.' It makes you work harder. It makes you push harder. It's more than money. It's more than the title. It's my pride, and it can be scary thinking about it. I could lose. It's scary.
It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you're caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout - not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice whatever it was you had to say. What you've never said before. What perhaps you don't even know till now.
My husband is my most ruthless critic... sometimes he will say, 'It's been said better before.' Of course it has. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.
I started to make harder jokes before anyone else did. And the producers would get anxious. They'd say, 'That's a little bit hard-edged, isn't it?' And I'd say, 'Let's just try it and see how the audience reacts. If they don't like it, let's cut it out.' And the audience roared with laughter, so I learned you could do this harder humor and people loved it.
As a young girl, I'm always going to have to work a bit harder to prove myself; that's just reality. But having to work harder makes me feel like girls are stronger, too.
I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.
I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.
But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer, the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever.
The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.
Now I am depressed myself,' I said. 'That's why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.
I'm sure like everyone else I'm not always the happiest if I don't do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.
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