 Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people. |
| I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward. |
| I remember leaving the hospital - thinking, 'Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don't know beans about babies! I don't have a license to do this.' We're just amateurs. |
| Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth! |
| My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations. |
| My stories are never quite good enough. |
| The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest. |
| 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. |
| I didn't really choose to write; I more or less fell into it. |
| At most I'll spend three or four hours daily, sometimes less. |
| I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level. |
| It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them. |
| If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all. |
| For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood. |
| I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless? |
| My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages. |
| I spend about a year between novels. |
| I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin. |
| The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning. |
| It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from. |
