DON MORRILL: I'm a persistent writer. So I try to write everyday, and generally do. Usually I try to get it done in the morning-- get started on it, engage it early. But I'm probably also a writer who, in some ways, is writing all the time. I mean, I think writers do that. If they're paying attention to the world around them-- people, they're thinking about the project that they're working on now. They're both-- you don't have to always be sitting at your computer or at a piece of paper to be writing.
If you're paying attention to the world, and then you are able to take note of it. I mean you have to record it. You can't just have great thoughts and let them go through in one ear and out the other so to speak.
I'm a big believer in notebook keeping and notebook taking-- note taking. So I'm kind of constantly on the lookout for things. I believe that if you don't pay attention to what comes to you, you're frankly going to lose it. I mean, it will come to you as a gift every day. We're offered these incredible gifts of imagery, and experience, memory, perception.
Most of the subject matter of good writing comes before us. But it comes before us in the way that wild animals might be seen in the wilderness, not on a TV documentary. Where it's just a flash, or rustle in the bushes, or a flash on the hillside. But it's the life, and it's the real, it's the authentic, it's the thing.
And it happens all the time. It happens between people all the time. You're at dinner. You meet someone. Someone comes up to you and says something to you.
I was at the gym the other day. A guy came up to me, I'd known for many years-- casually in my neighborhood, to let me know that he was running for State Senate in Florida. And I told him I would give him my support. And there was a moment when he turned, and I could see he hasn't done this yet. He hasn't done this kind of asking yet. He doesn't know what now to say since I've capitulated so easily.
And so there was a kind of moment of authenticity and truth there. I don't know what I would do with it in writing, but it's there. Those are the things that a writer seeks. And you kind of cultivate your-- and refine your antenna to pay attention to it.
Writers are very deliberate. I began as a writer in play. And I still believe in play, but there's a great deal of deliberate intent in the play. It's like telling yourself, it's play time. Now I will play. And it may seem very spontaneous at the beginning, but it doesn't take very long for it to be quite spontaneous for you to start-- to have discovery. And that's-- it's almost like entering into a special kind of state of mind or special existential condition, I guess.
So I write every day. I believe it's important to stay close because you don't-- I don't believe your first ideas are usually your best ideas. You have to go through them to something else. And the only way you can do that is through some kind of persistence.