Quotes About Authorship

The most difficult novel I have had to write in terms of just getting it done was The Vampire Lestat. It took a year to write.

I've been the desperate writer before. I wrote a novel, and they paid me for it, and I've had those calls from my agent, and I'm like, 'Do you need me to ghost-write a vampire novel? What do you need? I'll do Transformers... tell me!'

I have ten thousand memories of myself writing alone in basements, bizarre servant quarters, cemeteries, deserted fountains, the band van, and other awkward settings.

I think maybe I might have to do what some other authors do, which is do a variation on my name, just to send readers the message that, 'Yep, this is me, but this is a different part of me. So brace yourself.'

Whatever they do, criminals and non-criminals act in particular ways. Some writers, for instance, use computers, others pen and paper. Some write in the morning, some at night. Each writer has a distinct style, with variations in grammar, sentence structure, and voice.

'Get Skinny' is my sixth book. I look over the books that I've written, and my subject matters are varied, and I write books pertaining to that which I'm dealing with at the moment.

When I'm writing, I write all day. Other days, I sit around thinking. Or I run around from one meeting to another, out in the world. It varies, and I like that.

Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.

The minimum I need is six months to allow for dithering, procrastination and the research. The research times varies from book to book; some are faster because they're based off resources I have at my disposal.

I think once you write fiction, you put it out, and it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, some of which are going to be shocking to the writer.

Which editor? I can't think of one editor I worked with as an editor. The various companies did have editors but we always acted as our own editor, so the question has no answer.

I don't sell enough books to pay for the lawyers, however. And these various problems finally became too much.

If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people out there toiling over your unpublished manuscript, trying to make your way across that vast ocean in a bathtub, I can only say this to you: keep paddling. Well, either that or start vlogging.

Labels like 'Chinese Science Fiction' or 'Western Science Fiction' summarize a vast field of work, all of which are diverse and driven by individual authors, with individual concerns.

As a writer of both novels and screenplays, I can say that screenwriting is a vastly rewarding creative life - if you fight hard enough to do it on your own terms. Whether I write books or not, my screenwriting life has been creatively rewarding and remains so.

It seems like I've been writing since birth! I started writing poems before I got to school. I wrote the class musical in first grade - both words and music. It was about a bunch of vegetables who got together in a salad. I played the chief carrot!

There are three reasons why this book came into being. First, throughout the 33 years I've been writing recipes - although I'm not vegetarian myself - I have greatly enjoyed creating vegetarian recipes, and cooking and serving them at home.

I always wrote as a vehicle for expression but did not try writing for publication until my mid-thirties, at which time I started writing for magazines. I wrote essays and then short stories, then moved into novels.

I can understand the allure of a venerable Big Six imprint, of a shot at the New York Times list, of a publisher-sponsored book tour, of seeing your hardbacks in bookstores and your paperbacks in supermarkets.

My traducers propound my alleged malefaction as though I have spewed venom on women for half a century. But only a madman would go to the trouble of writing 31 books in order to affirm his hatred.

I guess there's a sort of cycle with writing books. There's all the researching and then the imagining and writing - which is the real job - and then there's always a period when the book comes out and you have to lift your head and venture out.

Amanda Hocking and Hugh Howey have been successful in their self-publishing ventures. But notice that Hocking would prefer to write and hand over the editing, promotion, and selling to a traditional publisher.

I write with a sense of my future readers being ever on the verge of setting down the book and pronouncing it a bore. Fear and insecurity are great motivators.

There are people who think it's easier to write books in verse, and it's definitely not.