Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.
When Rachel Carson accepted the National Book Award, she said, 'if there is poetry in my book about the sea it is not because I deliberately put it there but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out poetry.
Some people work to live, and other people live to work. Then some people, like me, are both unemployed and alive (at least at the time of this writing).
If I ever see an alien fishing in Scotland, and witness it catching the Loch Ness Monster, I’d probably assume the world would want me to write a poem about the event, rather than take pictures of it.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but is 400% less valuable, because a picture only captures one of the senses—sight. However, words can describe the other four senses, making writing four times more potent than photography.
I’ll bet if I write a sentence and mention the word “edit,” people will slow down and scour my words for errors. Did it wrok?
Even if there were only seventeen syllables left in the universe, I still don’t think The Mythical Mr. Boo would write a haiku. Especially not if those syllables were groups of “oh,” “no,” “ah,” “ouch,” “ugh,” “eek,” and “...
When I write I am an avocado, and in a team sport setting, I am guacamole. And not to sour cream on your dreams, but with my love life, I am a nacho.
Since I can barely write two books a year the best solution seems to be co-author projects. My goal isn't to get another writer to clone me... it's more to produce a book that shares my vision of positive, fun entertainment.
Follow your instincts. Do the kind of writing you love to do and do best. 'Stiff' was an oddball book - I mean, a funny book about cadavers? - and I worried that it would be too unconventional. In the end, that's what has made it a success, I think.
You need that pride in yourself, as well as a sense, when you are sitting on Page 297 of a book, that the book is going to be read, that somebody is going to care. You can't ever be sure about that, but you need the sense that it's important, that it...
I wanted what women always want: permission. But he'd had that before this book was even written; it was, after all, the first thing I'd envied about him. It was arguably what enabled him to write the book in the first place. ("Envy")
The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.
Until I became a nurse, no one had ever asked me to sign a book contract. I had been writing for decades, read thousands of books, and even worked in publishing for 10 years. Who knew that nursing would be my break?
It helps when 1 can send the children off to their fathers so I can support my new book with a national publicity tour. I started writing the book when my daughter was 5. It took me almost four years.
I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called 'My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.' A publisher came to me and said, 'Write a book,' so I did. I wanted to call it 'Everybody Else Has Got a Book.'
I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confide...
I feel like the books were just written like a movie. You read it and you can just kind of see everything. Before I went in to read with the director, I read the first book and I loved it. I didn't realize how good the writing was. And then I went in...
I had thought up the title, 'The Good Luck of Right Now,' several years ago. I had no idea what it meant or what the book would be about but I thought, 'Someday I'm going to write a book with that title.'
Read good books. Read bad books - and figure out why you don't like them. Then don't do it when you write. If you are a science fiction or fantasy writer, going to conventions and attending panels is very useful.
When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something int...
