My experience is, the writer I was when I began was only a fraction of what I feel capable of doing now. Don't stand on that threshold saying, 'I'm uncertain about my talent.' You can grow that part of yourself.
Before Churchill had done anything else, he was a writer. He believed to the core that words matter. They count. They can change the world.
The New Zealand sense of humor is tough and realistic. Jokes are not surreal; they are about life and death and tough decisions.
If you look at the copies of Churchill's speeches that have survived, they are heavily marked up. He was scrupulous about the impact of each word. He preferred short words and the repetition of short words. He knew everything about the techniques of rhetoric.
When I was growing up in the '80s and working in the theater, David Mamet exploded with a whole new reworking of what dialogue should sound like. It was punchy and raw and repetitive, bursting with dynamic. I remember that switching on a lot of lights for me.
My routine is to create activities for myself unrelated to writing that allow little time for writing. This means that when I do get the chance to write, it is like a stolen luxury, something clandestine and almost forbidden.
As you get older, you become more vain. But as your looks slowly deteriorate, your eyesight worsens, so it all balances out.
Truth is seldom appreciated and never understood, whereas a flattering lie is always appreciated and instantly understood.
The people I'm drawn to are sort of self-created. They came from backgrounds where not much was expected of them, necessarily.
I still present myself as a New Zealander, answering people's questions about New Zealand and contributing in my own unlikely way to the global perception that Kiwis can and do fly high.
I have three favorite cities: London, Wellington, and Los Angeles. What makes them so good? The friends who live there.