One of the joys of writing music is making your own mark. Study other stuff, immerse yourself in music and then tell your own truth.
Writing music on your own makes you think a lot about your life. Who are you? Would you change anything about yourself? This is where it comes from.
I think that's one of the most important things that books do: not to teach you anything, but to help you teach yourself by just being in the world of the book and having your own thoughts and reactions and noticing your own reactions and thoughts and learning about yourself that way.
When I used to teach writing, what I would tell my playwriting students is that while you're writing your plays, you're also writing the playwright. You're developing yourself as a persona, as a public persona. It's going to be partly exposed through the writing itself and partly created by all the paraphernalia that attaches itself to writing. But you aren't simply an invisible being or your own private being at work. You're kind of a public figure, as well.
If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.
Read a lot, finding out what kind of writing turns you on, in order to develop a criterion for your own writing. And then trust it-and yourself.
When you write the script, you're home in a room by yourself, and you're writing, and there's no connection with the real performing world. So you get a lot of things wrong and make a lot of mistakes and make a lot of bad choices.
You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.
You get a lot of who you are as a musician across through the music you write. If you're writing your own music, then it's important to be really honest.
Writing can be a lonely business. But gradually your characters, or the scenes and peopl from your past, begin to rise up around you, and you find yourself writing your way out of loneliness, writing into your own company.
You learn so much with each book, but it's what you teach yourself by writing your own books and by reading good books written by other people - that's the key. You don't want to worry too much about other people's responses to your work, not during the writing and not after. You just need to read and write, and keep going.
Teach yourself and teach your families about the gift of the Holy Ghost and the Atonement of Jesus Christ. You will do no greater eternal work than within the walls of your own home.
Think of the difference between a team sport and one that you do by yourself. Like it or not, if you're by yourself, you're going to be faced with a lot more of your own doubts and your own drawbacks and your own whatever.
Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
The only thing you create music with is your own creativity and your own ears. And it takes a lot of time to develop your own ears. It's really important, before you go to the studio, to realize yourself: What do I want to hear? What do I want to create?
You put so much of yourself out there as an actor. You show the many facets of who you are when you're performing - or who you could be - you show yourself angry, upset, sad, vulnerable. The one thing I keep as my own private secret is the music.