Whenever I write about immigration, I hear heart-wrenching stories of computer workers who are unemployed and facing severe hardship.
Lots of people working in cryptography have no deep concern with real application issues. They are trying to discover things clever enough to write papers about.
I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting.
When I start writing a novel, I have no sense of direction, no idea, really nothing.
You don't really have to say much when your headline is 'Drag Queen Robs Burger King.' Sometimes comedy writes itself.
It wasn't until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you've got to write your own books and nobody else's, and then everything followed from there.
Researching and writing about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98 was one of the most exciting and involving projects I've undertaken.
My seventeen years of teaching inform my sense of audience in every line I write.
I think of myself as writing realist American fiction. 'Cynical but hopeful' wouldn't be the worst thing I've ever been called.
I have no interest in non-fiction. I don't read it and don't watch it and don't write it, other than a little journalistic column.
I used to have a real passion for writing, but not so much anymore - probably because I do too much of it.
Writing about identity can be like maneuvering through a minefield, even when considering contemporary figures who have discussed the subject themselves.
Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
Writing an acceptance speech gives you the expectation of winning, and you are therefore devastated or hurt if you didn't win.
I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me.
The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice.
There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.
I can't write every day. I have to skip a day in between. If I try to do it every day, nothing comes.
It's no fun to think about infinity and no cinche to write about it. Again, it helps to look for some human link.
I wanted to be a scientist. I did a thesis on lions. But I realised photography can show things writing can't. Lions were my professor of photography.
If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.
