I'm a fiction writer, and I do write essays, but I am not a poet. And I absolutely reject the phrase 'woman writer' as anti-feminist. I wrote an essay about this as far back as 1977, at the height of the neo-feminist movement.
As a writer, I have to admit, there is something darkly compelling about Alzheimer's because it attacks the two things most central to a writer's craft - language and memory, which together make up an individual's identity. Alzheimer's makes a new ch...
When dealing with writers it breaks down like this: a regular writer is your average everyday megalomaniac. Like every artist, there's a part of them that believes--nay, knows--the world turns for them. Most are harmless. Some are obnoxious. Some are...
English teachers, workshops, and myths try to make writers slow down. We are the ONLY ART on the planet that tells young artists to not practice and do less to get better. Head-shaking in its stupidity. And new writers buy into that.
I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of st...
Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away i...
African narratives in the West, they proliferate. I really don't care anymore. I'm more interested in the stories we tell about ourselves - how, as a writer, I find that African writers have always been the curators of our humanity on this continent.
I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you'd quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.
If you are destined to become a writer, you can't help it. If you can help it, you aren't destined to become a writer. The frustrations and disappointments, not even to mention the unspeakable loneliness, are too unbearable for anyone who doesn't hav...
I believe that stories find writers, writers don't find stories. With the 'Pendragon' series, I actually had multiple story ideas and decided that instead of writing them individually, I would create a character whose journey would thread them all to...
John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.
Everyone who knew me as a child, they say they're not surprised that I became a writer because I wrote all the time. I don't remember writing, because I wouldn't have had the tools, but I think what they are saying is that I would pretend I was a wri...
Adult Pi Patel: So which story do you prefer? Writer: The one with the tiger. That's the better story. Adult Pi Patel: Thank you. And so it goes with God. Writer: [smiles] It's an amazing story.
Writer: I don't know what to say. Adult Pi Patel: It's hard to believe, isn't it? Writer: It is a lot to take in. To figure out what it all means. Adult Pi Patel: If it happened, it happened. Why should it have to mean anything?
Satine: I can't believe it. I'm in love. I'm in love with a young, handsome, talented duke. Christian: Duke? Satine: Not that the title's important, of course. Christian: I'm not a duke. Satine: Not a duke? Christian: I'm a writer. Satine: A writer?
I mean, first, almost all writers these days teach because they don't make enough money publishing to live on, to support themselves - people like Tobias Wolff, Anne Beattie, Amy Hempel, Stuart Dybek; a lot of short story writers, for one thing.
I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it's poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what...
My son is trying to be a sports writer, and my daughter is a college student. She wants to be a comedy writer, and she's at film school. I discouraged both of them early on from getting involved in Starbucks. I didn't think it would be fair; plus, th...
Holly Golightly: What do you do, anyway? Paul Varjak: I'm a writer, I guess. Holly Golightly: You guess? Don't you know? Paul Varjak: OK, positive statement. Ringing affirmative. I'm a writer.
In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer. [dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]
Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts. We are been taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing'. But a writer's job is ...
