People are always coming up to me with my books and saying, 'You write these things I think but I could never say.'
If you write a book that's as powerful and successful as 'Bastard,' there's a strong desire to prove there's something else.
I will not write a lame follow-up. It could take me 20 years. But I will never turn in a book that I'm not happy with.
Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.
As a kid, I spent every summer bent over a stack of books, obsessively writing detailed reports on each one.
Our life is a blank book and we are the authors......... Write and shape your story as much as the mind can imagine it
I think the kind of unexpected I really love is when you open books and the actual way of writing is different and interesting. Like reading Virginia Woolf for the first time or Lawrence Durrell for the first time.
My favourite part of writing a book is thinking up the ideas, and that can start a long time before I actually sit down at my desk.
Overall, one of the things that excites me most about self-publishing is that the highest-value use of my time in promoting the books will be found in writing more of them.
When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.
For a long time, I'd wanted to write a book that I would be proud and happy and psychologically and morally comfortable about my parents' reading.
But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.
You cannot prove this in real time, but when economists 20 years from now write a book on the recovery, it may well be entitled, 'It could have been much better.'
If somebody takes the time, a: to read a book that I have written, and then to b: care about it enough to write me and ask questions, surely I owe them a response.
I didn't write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself.
Sometimes I just want to write a really intense love scene. But I can't do that in my books for teens, or parents will complain - believe me, I've tried.
I actually love Stephen King's writing. I mean, we, actually, at Castle Rock, we've made seven movies out of Stephen King books.
I think of my books now as suspense novels, usually with a love story incorporated. They're absolutely a lot harder to write than romances. They take more plotting and real character development.
You know, I mean this sincerely, you know, I'm so grateful that I get to get up in the morning and do this, you know, and write books.
When I was child, I never spoke. Teacher used to write remarks on my note book. My mom sent me to a trainer. I started talking, and it gave me confidence.
