The way I write is this: I write about a thousand words a day, a little bit more. The next morning, I read those thousand words and cursorily edit that. Then I write the next thousand. I do that all the way to the end of the book and then I reread the book quite a few times, editing as go through.
Rhyme to kill, rhyme to murder, rhyme to stomp,
Rhyme to ill, rhyme to romp,
Rhyme to smack, rhyme to shock, rhyme to roll,
Rhyme to destroy anything, toy boy.
On the microphone:
I'm Poppa Large, big shot on the East Coast.
In 1967, in DeKalb v. DeSpain, a court (255 F.Supp. 655. N.D.Ill. 1966.) took a 4-line nursery rhyme used by a K-5 kindergarten class and declared the nursery rhyme unconstitutional. The court explained that although the word 'God' was not contained in this nursery rhyme, if someone were to hear the rhyme, he might think that it was talking about God - and that would be unconstitutional!
I used to write on pads with a pen but had trouble reading the words the next day. Years later, Bob Dylan taught me to just write and write on a laptop computer. Then I'd print that out. When it was time to write a song, I'd go through the pages and sing melodies to words that moved me.
A lot of people think they can write poetry, and many do, because they can figure out how to line up the words or make certain sounds rhyme or just imitate the other poets they've read. But this boy, he's the real poet, because when he tries to put on paper what he's seen with his heart, he will believe deep down that there are no good words for it, no words can do it, and at that moment he will have begun to write poetry.
When I journal, I write about images that I've seen that I think might make good stories. I write about things that I hear that I think I can turn into a story. I write about the story that I'm working on and where I think it might go.
I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.
One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it.
To me, poetry is a recreation, a renewal of language... The subtlety of what words mean and the fact that you write something and all of a sudden you'll realize that "yes, it reaches out. It meant that, too." Then all of a sudden you'll get a rhyme and the rhyme will throw up a whole new way of looking at things. It's this relationship that you never dreamed of.
I think it's good to have a balance. Everything I write about, it's not something I necessarily might have went through, there's songs where I might have an idea, sometimes it might be a melody or something that I like, I make up a story to go with that melody. But I do think it's most important to have honest songs.
My musical instrument is Hebrew and, to me, this is the most important fact about my writing. I write in words. I don write in sounds or in shapes or in flavors. I write in words. And my words are Hebrew words.
Some people just have a love for words and thinking about words that rhyme.
Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down.
There's something so wonderful about writing in rhyme where it isn't just the meaning of the words, it's the music to the words and the shape and the sound.
Oh, southern rappers... so hard to write a rhyme when you only know 30 words.
Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word.