What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.
What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer. Not as somebody with a particular idea to sell, or something like that.
Margot Livesey, my dear friend, reads all the drafts of what I write, and I read hers. We have an intense working relationship. I've been really lucky to know her. She's a great reader and teacher as well as an astonishingly good writer.
Once I started getting paid to be a writer and not having lots of other gross responsibilities, like making the puzzle or whatever, then my ambition changed, and I thought, 'Now I want to be a good writer.' And that became my ambition.
Admiration from my readers inspire me, and the only 'formula' I believe in towards making a good writer is: 'to thine own self be true!'
Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland, there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit and talent... Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.
Nowadays I'm not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.
I grew up with another pretty darn good writer: Glenn Frey of the Eagles. We were very good friends, and we kind of studied it together.
Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.
Disney was not a good animator, he didn't draw well at all, but he was always a great idea man, and a good writer.
