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"I never intended to be a professional writer; as the story developed, the one thing I had in my hopes was that this would be something tangible to separate me from the nameless, numbered masses."
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"In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside. A man came out at one point, 'What are you doing?' he questioned me. 'The thing is, I'm writing a book,' I started with a smile. He waved me off, his hand as wide as a tennis racket. 'Everyone is writing a book, my dear,' he said. Between you and I, it's his house that MIrabelle ends up breaking into."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write."
Author Name
Personal Development
"After each of his books, the writer, for a while, feels once again that he can now die happy."
Author Name
Personal Development
"When you put down the good things you ought to have done and leave out the bad things you did do - well that's memoirs."
Author Name
Personal Development
"In writing, you must kill all your darlings."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly."
Author Name
Personal Development
"You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We do not write because we want to, we write because we have to."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The best stories are like the best burgers: big, juicy, and messy."
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Personal Development
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"I'm trying to make all the characters change and grow, or regress."
Change
"Also, there are authors and publicists using the Internet to manipulate opinion, both positively for a work and negatively against the competition. I don't do this and can't stomach it, honestly."
Work
"I do that mostly because I believe that the fantasy business is in terrible trouble right now, for several reasons, not the least of which being the almost Democrat vs. Republican mentality of readers on the Internet."
Business
"In the past, TSR and now Wizards of the Coast have asked me to do game stats for my characters, and I'm never comfortable doing that. It's all relative after all."
Now
"I loved the world of imagination."
Imagination
"I've always been a fighter. If you tell me I can't, I'll die trying to prove you wrong."
Optimism
"Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers."
Reading
"Here's the thing, for me at least: this is a huge genre now. It wasn't always so. Not so many years ago, it wasn't so. There is a tremendous diversity in fantasy today."
Creativity
"I never intended to be a professional writer; as the story developed, the one thing I had in my hopes was that this would be something tangible to separate me from the nameless, numbered masses."
Writing
"It got so bad that by the time I was graduated, the only reading I did was in order to get the grade and the only writing I did was in order to get the grade."
Time
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