For me writing and acting all comes out of the same place, a compulsion to review and connect to something. For me they are more similar than different.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.
I love writing. I feel more connected to that than I do a lot of the other things.
Interestingly enough, there is a really different dynamic when you're directing something that somebody else has written compared to when you're directing something that you've written. And there's a good and a bad side to it. I think the bad side is that you never feel the same level of connection to the material - you just don't.
Writing is sort of putting a puzzle together halfway. Then, performing it has always been the completion of it. Once that happens, I'm feeling verbally communal with other people. It's out there and I feel so much better about it.
I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work, and it creates this strange connection.
In my office I have a sign that says, 'Don't think. Just write!' and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, or even each sentence or paragraph. For me, stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times.
The act of writing... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately, I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.
I see my writing as the process of looking at the usual, but from two steps to the side.
I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.
Depending on what I'm working on, I come to the writing desk with entirely different mindsets. When I change form one to the other, it's as if another writer is on the scene.