I spend most of my days pacing around, muttering that I have no ideas, feeling like I'm walking a plank.
First scenes are super-important to me. I'll spend months and months pacing and climbing the walls trying to come up with the first scene. I drive for hours on the freeway.
After I work with my editor to get the manuscript in good shape, I sketch and lay out a whole book loosely, usually in black and white. You learn things about your text when you have to think about pacing and page-turns.
People think that because people do religious stuff, that's all we're supposed to do. But with God's help, everything that He wants me to accomplish, I'm going to do it. It's all about pacing.
We'd be working in our motel room through the night, and I'd come up with an idea at two in the morning, and he'd start jumping up and down, pacing across the room, or whatever.
An Englishmen thinks seated; a Frenchmen standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards.
We live in a zoo, and we get to share all our animals with the people who come in. We really put our animals first, and then the staff, and then the visitors. The animals aren't pacing; they're all happy. When you touch an animal, it ultimately touches you.
All these years later, I have almost no memory of the shows themselves. It's a blur. I remember my jogging runs better - that was my way of getting my energy together. I used to try to get to the arena as late as possible; otherwise, I'd just be pacing around, waiting to go on.
The main problem was a pacing problem. I had wanted the project to be about 20-30 issues, and I should have written it out as a full script beforehand.
Saunders didn't beat me. I wasn't battered or shown-up. I made the mistake of not pressing him early, pacing myself too much because it was my first 12-round fight.
