I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.
While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
To some extent, all authors are a little schizophrenic. We lead most of our lives in solitary confinement, living and breathing the books that we're writing.
In talking with people that have experienced it, I learned that PTSD is something that a person in a position of authority sometimes thinks they're not supposed to have. They don't always have an avenue to personally address it or even discuss it.
The difficulty that many foreign authors face in having their works translated into English has effects far beyond the United States.
It's easier to come up with new stories than it is to finish the ones you already have. I think every author would feel that way.
If life is a poem, be the poet. If life is a story, be the author. If life is an adventure, be the hero. To live any other way is a waste of this experience we call life.
No one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it.
I believe that everyone has a story to tell. The problem that is inherent to most aspiring authors is that they struggle with getting the story from their head to the page.
I've never seen an 'English' books section in, well, an English bookshop, but in Scotland, most bookshops have a set of shelves dedicated to Scottish authors.
Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.
We will defend ourselves, and we have full rights to do so. If the authorities try to destroy us, we have the right to rise up. Sooner or later this will happen.
Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don't let them take you ALIVE.
If you call someone up on a mistake - if the drummer's put an extra beat in a bar or something - you have a lot more authority if you can show them how to do it right.
With 'Crucible,' any big changes I wanted to make I only had to run by Lucasfilm, not other authors whose stories I might affect.
Point-of-view is a matter that readers rarely pay attention to, yet it's one of the most important story decisions an author makes.
Many authors hate to go on grinding book tours. But I've always found it a useful way to be a foreign correspondent in America and take the pulse of the country.
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia. [ ]
I'm fairly certain when I die that the obituary will say, 'Author of 'Angels in America' dies.' Unless I'm completely forgotten, and then it won't say anything at all.
There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.
[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!
