A Quote by William Monahan
If you write a screenplay that gets circulated, you have a bigger readership than any literary novelist. And it's an educated audience as well.
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On a spectrum of literary productions, memoir is just another form. If the person doing the reviewing or critiquing was ill-educated about literary forms, they could write something dunderheaded about the author or their life (I've seen these and barfed at them), but anyone who is well-practiced and educated in literature - why would they leave that at the door when entering memoir?
People say, "Well, you went on television, it enlarged your readership." It did not at all, not at all. I might as well tell you, I lost some readership, because the profound audience felt somehow bothered by my too easy manner.
One thing I knew about the novelist’s task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.
There are different reasons why people write: for themselves, or for other writers, or to get prizes, or keeping an audience in mind. In my case, it felt really nice that a certain type of readership read the book and liked it, even though my readership is not as wide as certain popular books.
When I set out to write a screenplay, I have in my mind a beginning and an end but that end part continually changes as I start to write the middle. That way by the time the screenplay is finished I have taken myself and my audience from a familiar beginning point through the story to an unfamiliar ending point.
For a novelist, no matter what, it's a complete work, even if it's not published. But if you write a screenplay, and it's not performed, then it's a sad and frustrating experience.
If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved. It's harder to write a good screenplay than to find something.
You cannot live in Los Angeles for any period of time without eventually trying to write a screenplay. It's like a flu bug that you catch ... Even the plumber has a screenplay in his truck.
It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice.
It's so much easier to write for a person in your life than to write for some imagined readership, so you write something that's more intimate and true.
As long as I can make that audience one thing, one unit, then I'm okay with it. But, sometimes, the bigger the audience, the weirder it gets.
There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.
I don't write with any audience in mind. I just write. I take a chance on the audience. That's what I did originally, and I think it's worked--in the sense that I find there is an audience.
Any time you can create something that gets to a large audience is fantastic. And television still gets you to a huge audience.
The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man's encounter with God is how he shall make the experience--which is both natural and supernatural--understandable, and credible, to his reader. In any age this would be a problem, but in our own, it is a well- nigh insurmountable one. Today's audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental.
My mum was well-travelled, well-educated and made me understand from books, from my imagination and from just taking me away on holiday once a year, wherever she could, that the world was bigger than Peckham.
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