ANNE MCCAFFREY

I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel.

I have always used emotion as a writing tool. That goes back to me being on the stage.

What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids, ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food.

I have my good days and my bad days, but I don't have as much energy as I used to back when I was young and foolish and didn't count the cost - and it takes a lot - to write.

That's such a thrill - a story I wrote at the beginning of my career, and it's still packin' the house.

At age 77, I need the help of someone with more energy than I can now summon to finish a book.

I have a shelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens.

Writing has been so much a part of my life that I'm really quite annoyed that I can't do as much as I used to.

I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime.

That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.

The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.

I didn't raise Todd to be a writer, but he happened to be one anyway.

I'm very fond of the Talent series, and also the Crystal Singer trio.

People have freaked out when I tell them that my dragons are scientifically based... what else can you call a genetically engineered life form?

Make no judgements where you have no compassion.

A good story is a good story no matter who wrote it.

But Ship Who Sang remains my favorite story. I really rocked folks with that and still cannot read it aloud myself without weeping at the end.

I think writers need windows on a view to remind them that a whole world is out there, not the minutiae with which they might be dealing on a close scale.

I have written my own screen version of Pern, but had no buyers yet.

I'm 78, I'm on my pension in Ireland, and all that good stuff.

I think the Internet, particularly the availability of information, is great. I do a lot of correspondence on-line and have a chat line to talk to my fans as well.

Because we build the worlds we wouldn't mind living in. They contain scary things, problems, but also a sense of rightness that makes them alive and makes us want to live there.

I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.

I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom.

I also don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured - since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing - that religion was one problem Pern didn't need.