A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It's a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer. Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there's a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith. The writer has to choose the right words to express his sentences, and then, once he has sealed the envelope, he has to place those thoughts in the hands of someone else, trusting that the feelings will be delivered, and that the recipient will understand the writer's intent. How childish to think that could be easy.
I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for.
You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is re-naming.
When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.
It came about as follows: over the years when I was involved in dianetics, I wrote the beginnings of many stories. I would get an idea, and then write the beginning, and then never touch it again.
Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to
them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money.
But the idea of a man making his living by writing seemed, in that hardy environment, so fantastic that even today I am sometimes myself assailed by a feeling of unreality.
Unlike my opponent, I will not let oil companies write this country's energy plan, or endanger our coastlines, or collect another $4 billion in corporate welfare from our taxpayers.
I live alone in a house, so for me it's very good to just be able to re-charge and just disappear and escape from reality and that's usually when I write most of my lyrics and my songs. It's a very happy productive place.