People don't listen when you lecture. No one wants to be talked down to or scolded.
I feel like Valleywag has been different things with different writers over the years. Up and down. I think it's at their best when they get a legitimate scoop, like when someone leaks them documents. I feel like we could do more of that, breaking stories.
I turned down a film that was offered to me in the very early '80s, a Scorsese film. That probably wasn't a good career move.
We haven't sat down with Scott and Caroline and said, Now you realize that there's X amount of pounds of thrust. And this can happen and that can happen.
I would give anything to sit down with my maternal grandmother and have a cup of tea and play Scrabble. She died 10 years ago.
I don't generate a storyline and then fill it out in the course of writing. The story actually generates in the course of the writing. It's one of the reasons I've never been comfortable doing screenplays, because in order to get the contract for the screenplay, you have to sit down and tell them what's going to happen.
Many times, the way I write my themes or melodies is that I hear it, and then I sing into my phone or something, or I'll scribble down on a piece of paper.
I have no system of writing. It's chaos. I could be upside down on my bedroom floor; I'll be scribbling on a pad that I'll then lose. I'll be on the toilet with my laptop on, sitting in the pub with my iPad.
I started putting down my thoughts on paper out of loneliness while I was studying in America. I was very close to my grandfather, and when he died, I couldn't visit home. I started scribbling those thoughts.
When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I'm feeling.
Scribbling things down is my therapy. I filter later.
In computers, we do all kinds of manual manipulations. We grab and drag icons. We click on and open windows. We pull down a screen. We stretch a screen. We scroll up and down.
The more we turn down questionable offers like trip insurance and scrutinize 'one month' trials, the less incentive companies will have to use such schemes.
Those auditions - you sit down, and literally the whole time you're there, they scrutinize you, and you know that. But you can't take it personally.
If we could get the corporate tax rate down to, let's say, a maximum of 25 percent, it would be a sea change for this country. It would be great.
I could have easily gone down the wrong path and dropped out of school, but I was given a second chance.
We did a year of Uber in San Francisco before we went to a second city. You get those processes down, then you really get started.
Falling down became second nature and it really didn't bother me.
I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.
The dumbing down of elementary and secondary education has made its way to the collegiate level; too many unprepared students are admitted despite their inability to do college-level work.
