Quotes About Process

I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.

Our awards are selected by a jury of media and fans. It's a blended vote, which is a very unique process. That's what we've found works best for this industry, to have gamers and publications vote on it.

I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.

My first short story sale was to a magazine that sat on the story forever... and never did publish it.

I read my books aloud before they were published.

I don't reread my books after they're published, because it's agony.

Every writer, no matter published, unpublished, award-winning, or bestselling, faces insecurity. It crops up everywhere and, in my personal experience, nearly every day. It's just a part of the process.

I write synopses after the book is completed. I can't write it beforehand, because I don't know what the book's about. I invent something for my publisher because he asks for one, but the final book ends up very differently.

Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for 'Seesaw Girl,' eight months for 'Shard,' three years for 'When My Name Was Keoko!' The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish.

My publishers find me really challenging, as a lot of the time, I don't even know what I'm going to be writing about until I sit down to do it.

I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, its self-consciousness. And if you have one eye on the mirror to see how you're doing, you're not doing it as well as you can. Don't think about publishing, don't think about editors, don't think about marketplace.

There's a lot more to publishing a book than writing it and slapping a cover on it.

I worked in publishing before I became an author, so I knew how a book gets made.

Publishing in a way doesn't have a lot to do with writing, and writing doesn't have a lot to do with publishing.

The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter.

Write a lot and don't think about publishing - just the writing.

Publishing a book is a very different thing than writing one.

Cubans have no bar to being legalized once they are in America. All other Hispanics - with the exception of Puerto Ricans - have to go through a broken, dysfunctional process. One group is American from day one. And all the rest are trying to be.

I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say, 'Which of these things do I want to record?'

I write all over the house. Because I write in longhand, I can go anywhere I want... I have some notebooks here and there, and then I type it in and pull it out, and I do the revisions all over the place.

If you don't know the right people or have the right connections, you may never be discovered. With 'Opening Act,' we are democratizing a notoriously impossible process, pulling back the curtains on a consistently fascinating industry, and affording aspiring artists the chance of a lifetime.

When you write, it's making a certain kind of music in your head. There's a rhythm to it, a pulse, and on the whole, I'm writing to that drum rather than the psychological process.

I don't think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I'm rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time.

I find getting the first draft down to be the biggest challenge. Every word, every punctuation mark, every plot point is a decision. It's much more fun to play with something that already exists.