Quotes About Authorship

I'm famously secretive about my work. Nobody reads my books till they're finished.

I start writing at 7.30 A.M. and write till noon. I've never written a single word after 5.00 P.M.

You won't find a publisher until you have written the book and you won't find the time till you sit down, stay down, and write it. No one else is going to do it and that is a fact.

I have all the time and space in the world when I write a book.

While in the middle of writing a book, I have a hard time reading other books for pleasure.

I remember when I was writing 'The Tin Drum,' I had the totally misguided idea of giving Oskar Matzerath a sister, and he just wouldn't have it. There was no space for a sister, yet I had the character of the sister in my head. In fact I used her in later novels, in 'Cat and Mouse' and 'Dog Years,' Tulla Pokriski.

I love to read books by women I look up to who are smart, funny, and interesting, like Tina Fey's 'Bossypants' and Mindy Kaling's 'Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?'

I've never been a believer in the word-count thing. I write slowly and tinker with the words and the word order, and I throw a lot of stuff out.

At the very end of a book I can manage to work for longer stretches, but mostly, making stuff up for three hours, that's enough. I can't do any more. At the end of the day I might tinker with my morning's work and maybe write some again. But I think three hours is fine.

With 'Free Agent Nation,' I was figuring out how to write a book along with writing the book. Now I think I've kind of, sort of figured out how to write a book a little bit better. But the process remains not that different - slow; laborious; tiny, incremental progress each day, punctuated by feelings of despair and self-loathing.

Self-publishing worked for me. Being able to put your work in print, even if it's a tiny print-on-demand print run of a dozen or so copies, shows publishers and editors a completed piece of work and that you can follow through on a project.

I find my ideas in a number of places - tips, lawsuits, other news stories that raise interesting questions.

I'm afraid there are no magical tips. There is no secret. Writing is all about telling stories as well as you can.

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.

Personally I don't want to be regarded as that one person who's responsible for the title.

I'm one of those sad cases who've never wanted to be anything but a writer. I started writing my first novel when I was five years old. I have no idea what it was about, but I do remember spending considerable time trying to get the title right, though this had more to do with crayon colour than scansion.

There are many traditionally published authors who have hated the cover their publisher's decided on. Or the title or the marketing or the advertising. But there was nothing they could do about it.

After a while, you become really irritated that you're not recognised as the person who wrote 'The Full Monty.' Everyone goes on about how lovely the characters are. That's because they were written! 'What a clever title.' Yeah, that's because I made up the title!

An author's ability to bring a marketing synopsis to the table - along with a great manuscript - makes a difference in what books get picked up. This is true for both fiction and nonfiction titles. You need to show your publisher what you've got in your marketing arsenal.

Titles either come to you at the beginning or they don't come to you at all, I find, and I hate the feeling that I haven't got a title because it usually means that you are left at the end scrambling around trying to find something.

I suck at titles.

Well, normally we don't think all that hard about titles.

I think now I'm up to something like 85 different titles that I've published.