A Quote by Joyce Carol Oates
I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.
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I don't really think of these as projects. I think of them as bands. I have tried to not just convene a group of musicians and make one record or make one gig and just drop it. Each of them develop over time. I have been really fortunate to keep a band like the Sextet together over three very different albums. Each time, the goal got more deep for me in terms of how I wanted to write for those people. So it is really about trying to develop ideas and trying to have a consistent focus on a way to come up with new ideas in music that I want to do.
I know that the way to be a really successful writer is to write the same kind of book over and over again. Find the kind of thing that people like and just write one of those over and over again. I don't do that. I just keep doing different things.
I try to think of it not as writer's block, but a time where you just need to live life and experience things so you have something to write about.
Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.
There was a time before I felt I was a real writer, when I was a yarn spinner and I just wanted to tell story until it was over. But then there came a time where I was like, 'No, I want to understand something through writing this that I might have not understood before. I want people to come away with something to think about.'
If I've got Writer's Block it generally means that I don't have that much to say or something's not quite connecting. I have had Writer's Block a bunch of times and it's generally because I'm not able to write down what I'm feeling basically. Mostly, I just need to be alone really, or be with someone who can bring that out of me.
I don't like that we repeat a certain expression over and over again because I think it narrows the way that we look on the world. I also think that there is a certain responsibility if you work with moving images because it's so strong in creating behaviour; it's so strong in creating the way that we look on the world, so for me it's very important that I create images that I have an experience of or is something that I think exists in the world and not just in cinema.
I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you've got no control over it. I'm not one of those people who says, 'I've got to write a song every day.' I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I'm ready to write. It used to frustrate me, but it doesn't any more. It's just how it is.
Cannes is a circus, so you have to have fun with it. Everything suddenly becomes funny. And the promotion of a movie - that's where you really need to be a good actor. You need to make journalists believe that what you're saying is just for them and you've never said it before, even when you're talking about the same film over and over again.
When I got in trouble, my mom would make me read or write - I would have to write my name over and over and over again. It gave me great penmanship, but I also just liked to write. Every time I would go to the store, I would buy a notebook. I had thousands of them.
I don't think writers should have writer's block. I think they should write. Imagine you were a bus driver and you said, 'I've got bus driver's block.' Get over it.
I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands.
Usually I'll drive to certain locations over and over again, over a course of months really. And then it might just be I hit it at the right time, and the right light. And then I might go to that location over and over again, and then what happens in that lag time where - the image sort of locks in - all of a sudden I see it in my mind's eye.
Imagine that, death was just like being asleep. Would he have time to think before it was all over? And would he have time to think that he had thought it? But wait, how much do you have to think before you have finished thinking?
I think, I just always want to leave the door open for, you know, I don't want it to be finished. I've never gotten sick of a song, I've played them over and over and over again, and if I get bored with something, then I'll just change that thing.
I think it starts to feel really redundant when you start to do something the same way over and over again. I don't think it's good to become so dependent on a certain writing process.
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