“I think I was pushed in a way to write this book (”The Hundred Secret Senses”) by certain spirits in my life. They’ve always been there.. to kick me in the ass to write….
“I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule…. But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses.” ////
“Some of it [depression] is probably biochemical, but I think it is also in my family tree. I didn’t do anything about it for a long time, because, like many people, I worried about altering my psyche with drugs.
“As a writer, I was especially concerned with that. … [She used Zoloft.] I needed help… I don’t believe that good writers are born through unhappiness.”
From Amy Tan - a brief profile.
09.10.07 | Share This
One of last year’s films, Pan’s Labyrinth, was acclaimed for its powerful story and richly beautiful as well as terrifying images.
Writer and director Guillermo del Toro once commented, “When you have the intuition that there is something which is there, but out of the reach of your physical world, art and religion are the only means to get to it.”
In an interview, del Toro spoke about humans having two levels of thought: “One is conscious and the other unconscious or subconscious… Our problem is that we divide things that may be instinctive and collective and we have compartmentalized our perception so strongly that we only get them in glimpses and I think this is where the idea of the Jungian archetype comes to work…
“I believe that there is a whole dimension that I wouldn’t call supernatural but ’supranatural,’ that I believe in.” [From San Francisco Bay Guardian interview.]
Continued »
08.27.07 | Share This
“My wife says that when I emerge from my office and declare that not only am I writing a bad book, I’m writing the worst book anyone has ever started, then she knows that I’m two-thirds of the way there.”
Excerpts from article: With ‘Spook Country,’ William Gibson is still carving out his corner of cyberspace, By Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times, August 10, 2007:
“I don’t think anyone told me that I was crazy,” William Gibson recalled last week, sitting on the leafy patio of a Creole restaurant near his home.
“But they didn’t read science fiction, they didn’t care. I suspect they sort of thought it was sad, to become obsessed with doing this stuff.”
Gibson, almost three decades later, has had the last laugh. The black hole he disappeared into, day after day after day, became “Neuromancer,” the 1984 “cyberpunk” novel about a keyboard cowboy that envisioned both the Internet and virtual reality years before either existed….
His ninth novel, “Spook Country,” which came out this week, takes place in the same world as its predecessor, “Pattern Recognition,” the tale of a “coolhunter” who is allergic to logos and brands….
Gibson, who hardly seems like the slick technophile his novels suggest, often has this trouble describing his work. “The part of me that walks around, that conducts interviews and behaves in the world, has no idea how to write a novel,” he said. “I never start with ideas and intentions at all.” …
Continued »
08.11.07 | Share This
“Each year hundreds of screenplays become feature films. And each year thousands of teleplays become television episodes.
“Opportunity-wise, televisions’s got feature films beat. TV’s got the heat. The magic. The glitz. All that’s missing is you. How do you change that?
“Well, first you’ve got to dedicate yourself to the Game. Accept the fact that TV is a personal business. It’s about YOU first and your talent and ability second.
“Your next step is to adopt the ‘career’ mindset. In television almost no one hits the jackpot with one script. In television we make a reputation for ourselves, amass credits and contacts, and get to a place where we can go to work everyday. Staff writing jobs are what TV is all about.
“Like most managers, TV execs want to work with people who are just like them. For many that means YOUNG. For almost as many that means NEW. But most of all it means you’ve got to be THEIR KIND OF PERSON.
“In all likelihood, you’re already leaning in that direction. It helps, though, to learn as much as you can about what captivates the hearts and minds of the execs, and, fortunately, it’s relatively easy to do so…”
Continued in article: Getting Started in L.A. - by Larry Brody
~~
07.05.07 | Share This
“Don’t worry about getting into the profession. Write anyway to make your soul grow.
“That’s what the practice of any art is, it isn’t to make a living, it’s to make your soul grow.”
From interview: Vonnegut on Fiction
05.12.07 | Share This
Amy Hempel has been creating short stories for more than twenty years. In a recent interview, she talked about some of her origins and personality as a writer.
[The following is from the article "Hempel's short stories are long on finish" by Hillel Italie, Associated Press / Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2007.]
“The way I got my mother’s attention when I was a kid was by putting words together in an interesting way, or a funny way — what she found amusing,” Hempel says. “Since that [her attention] was what I wanted more than anything, and as a kid was very hard to get, that’s what I did.”
Hempel didn’t plan to be an author growing up, but instead studied journalism and premed “until I hit chemistry.” Life drove her to the page. When Hempel turned 19, her mother killed herself and within a year her mother’s sister did the same. In her 20s, Hempel was in two bad auto accidents, later writing in the story “The Harvest” that she “moved through days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.”
Continued »
05.11.07 | Share This
