As I got into my teens, I started reading better books, beginning with the Beats and then the hippie writers, people like Wallace Stegner up in Northern California, and all the political New Journalism stuff, the Boys on the Bus dudes and Ken Kesey.
I've got lots of favourite authors, but I would say Nicci French because I look more forward to reading her next new book than any other author.
With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.
I had begun to write novels because of a fierce, self-serving impulse in my own heart. I had not considered the potential in a book for felt communion, the bright largesse of intimately participating in the lives of other people.
I write everywhere. I've written books while I was on planes, at Disney World, and in multiple countries of which I am not a native. It can be a struggle to make word count sometimes, but I will persevere!
IF you wish to be a writer then don't wait until you write the "great American novel" for they aren't written they are created. If you don't write at all you won't know how "great" that simple book can be.
What having a Down's syndrome child isn't - and I feel very strongly about this - is a tragedy. All those pregnancy books you read when you are expecting refer to Down's syndrome as if it were the worst possible outcome, and it's not.
If you jotted down all of my ill-thought out comments, you could write a book entitled, Guide to Getting Punched in the Throat for Boneheads-Mad Hatter in "Death of the Mad Hatter" (Coming Soon!)
I dream that one day I would be a published writer and people would read my books - if not, I would be living in the mountains in a small hut, near a pond where swans swim, writing a diary for myself.
I am a big outliner. For my adult book, 'The Visibles,' I did not outline, and it took me two years to write because I just didn't outline, and I had no path.
Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there.
I've been drawing authors and politicians for newspapers for many years. I try to read up on the person; in the case of authors, read one of their books. I watch interviews via YouTube and collect pictures via the Internet.
When the mind stops searching, when it stops wanting refuge, when it no longer goes in search of security, when it no longer craves more books and information, when it ignores even the memory of desire, only then will Love arrive within.
When a young reader tells you that they'd never finished a book outside of school until they read yours, or that they really needed to hear something that one of your characters says or thinks... that's just rewarding and humbling.
I read a book recently by a psychiatrist who was able to interview a few serial killers and she had a thesis on how you could figure these people out. And she thinks that there are things that could tell you whether someone has the potential to do th...
Once the words of a book appear onscreen, they are no longer simply themselves; they have become a part of something else. They now occupy the same space, not only as every other digital text, but as every other medium, too.
Predictability is boring! I want a book to take me someplace I haven't been before, show me sights I haven't seen, make me ponder questions I may not have pondered before.
People always tell me I'm nothing like my character. Well, hopefully not! He's a character who's very defined. He was purposefully written by Jo Rowling as very one-dimensional in the first few books, because you're supposed to hate him.
My brother and I spent our childhood in movie theaters screaming. I decided early on that that was the epitome of entertainment. I'm always trying for that same level of adrenaline in my books.
The terrible thing about the Internet and Amazon is that they take the magic and happy chaos out of book shopping. The Internet might give you what you want, but it won't give you what you need.
I never planned on doing a book about Paul Farmer or his organization. I met him in Haiti when I was on a magazine assignment. It's almost like his story sort of fell in my lap.
