Writing is not a numbers game. You should focus more on reaching the hearts of readers and building fans more than publishing a plethora of books that no one may care about.
I want my words to open a portal through which the reader may leave the self, migrate to some other human sky and return 'disposed' to otherness.
Yet enthusiasm is no excuse for the historian going off balance. He should remind the reader that outcomes were neither inevitable nor foreordained, but subject to a thousand changes and chances.
I'm not sure the risks I take are any different from what other writers take, since we all serve at the pleasure of the reader.
My novels about medieval Wales were set in unexplored terrain; my readers did not know what lay around every bend in the road.
I'm like the painter with his nose to the canvas, fussing over details. Gazing from a distance, the reader sees the big picture.
I believe that being able to communicate directly with readers is a boon. I certainly enjoy it as much as they do.
For a writer it's a genuinely interesting and hopefully profitable era that makes a variety of books available to a variety of readers, extending both what's available and who gets to read it.
I didn't want readers to have to make allowances for what they couldn't see, but to be able to say to themselves that the fabric of the magic detailed was perfectly believable.
My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few.
My writing is a very authentic journey of discovery. I'm going out there to learn who I am. My readers, consequently, take the same journey as my protagonist.
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.
I notice that students, particularly for gay students, it's too easy to write about my last trick or something. It's not very interesting to the reader.
If you’re a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.
We're journalists, so our default position is we're not writing editorial. We're trying to bring information to readers, viewers, so that they can make up their own conclusions.
One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they're just infested with lots of stuff.
The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.
Quite casually I wander into my plot, poke around with my characters for a while, then amble off, leaving no moral proved and no reader improved.
Besides, who ever asked you what you wanted in this world, girl? The answer to that question, reader, as you well know, was absolutely no one.
Every time a written word is put to page it is the opportunity to expand our minds, whether we are the writer or the reader. Enjoy the journey wherever it may take you!
It remains unbelievable to me that I have any readers beyond my own blood relations - it's a crazy, wild gift.
