Quotes from Dean Wesley Smith

Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.

I believe that a writer is a person who writes. An author is a person who has written.

When I have a chapter finished, I jot down who the viewpoint characters are, what they are wearing, what happened in the chapter. So as I go along, I outline each book as I write it. I never outline ahead of the writing, but after the writing is done. That keeps the creative side of my brain in control of the writing.

The last editorial meeting I had was with a 24 year-old Vassar grad who tried to explain to me (after I had been selling novels longer than she had been alive) how to write a book. I kept my cool and was nice to the human, but as Kris and I walked down the sidewalk after that meeting, I remember my only words were 'I'm done with this shit.

T'Pol." Archer made his voice sting with command. "You're coming dangerously close to violating a rule of the bridge. Don't nag the captain.

English teachers, workshops, and myths try to make writers slow down. We are the ONLY ART on the planet that tells young artists to not practice and do less to get better. Head-shaking in its stupidity. And new writers buy into that.

It is not possible to translate a language that does not exist.

Learning makes us all uncomfortable.