I've always written a little bit. I mean, I've written screenplays, and I've doctored my dialogue for years, and I've written speeches - I was a speechwriter on 'The West Wing,' so I like that kind of thing. But I never really thought I'd write a book.
In the '70s, with movies like 'Little Big Man,' westerns began to have a little different flavor, and I think casting people and filmmakers began to realize, 'Hey, maybe we can get a little more authentic in terms of who we cast here.' That kind of opened up the gates.
Back in high school, I had this folk protest band, and I used to write all the time. And then, when I got in The B-52s, we began to write collectively, collaboratively - most all of our songs are written by jamming together.
The waltz can be sad and at the same time uplifting. You have to see life from both sides, and the waltz encapsulates that. If you're in my audience you give yourself to me and the waltz will grab you.
I always think it's important to choose your initial theme very carefully because you're going to be married to it for a long time. You might have to generate an hour's worth of music from a very short, little piece of theme.
Our film [Hide and seek ]was created as part of the Asian American Film Lab's 11th 72 Hour Film Shootout filmmaking competition, where filmmaking teams have just 72 hours to conceive, write, shoot, edit and submit a film based on a common theme. The winners were announced during the 38th Asian American International Film Festival in New York last July. The theme for 2015 was 'Two Faces' and was part of a larger more general theme of 'Beauty'.
The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.
Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.
I began to write in the first place because I expected everything to change, and I wanted to have things in writing the way they had been. Just a little things, of course. A little of my little.
It's different every time you write. Sometimes it might be harder than it was the day before. I don't like forcing it, but sometimes, if you force it a little bit, it helps you to push forward, and you get inspired in a way. I've written songs in an hour. And there are songs that have taken me six months.
I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me from another year of something that felt more like homework than fun.
I did not always know I would be a writer. Until I had a room of my own, I did not write much at all - no more than any other child who read a lot of books. I began to write fiction and poetry when I first had a room that was truly my own with a door that shut and some measure, however fragile, of privacy.
Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.
-'I don't see what good it's going to do for you to waltz back in there and--' -'Can I tango back in there, instead? So much sexier than the waltz.
I do remember when I was little - I had to have been no more than 6 - I redid my room. I talked my mom into taking me to a store, and I got, like, all coordinating blue, green, and yellow colors, and the theme was dinosaurs.
But more than anything I kind of pride myself in continuing the process that we're trying to accomplish, and that's just to get better and work on my fundamentals. So that's been kind of in the theme now for a couple years and we stuck with it and that's kind of what I want to keep doing.