Piers Anthony Quotes

I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.

As science-fiction was what I read in college, it was natural that I should be tempted to write it. So I did, and continued to do so, even while I was co-authoring mysteries with my husband Evan.

I don't really write all that well with others.

Well, unlike a lot of authors, I will be the one to cop to having a ghostwriter. I've always written with someone else.

If I could get someone like John Grisham or someone like that to sit down and write a book with me, I'd love that.

Our rule was that we [with Kate DiCamillo] would write everything together, literally every word.

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

I tried to write with someone else once before, but it was not successful.

Years ago, when I was writing westerns, other writers who were friends of mine wanted me to collaborate with them. And it just didn't work.

I look at the plotline and let my co-author basically write the book; first draft. Then they give it to me, and I totally destroy it and write all my stuff over it.

I love writing with other artists, I really do. Because you can try to guess what they would want to say and how they would sing it.

I know of a few writers who are husband and wife teams.

Writing with other people is absolutely delightful. It's social, which a writer doesn't usually get to do.

Writing on my own versus co-writing kind of is the exact same thing because we don't sit in the same room when we write. We're always writing alone anyway.

It's always hard to write and get your words out there, to find an editor, a publisher - readers! - who are going to appreciate them.

Probably, subliminally, I think of the reader as a kind of collaborator. I don't want to say something for the reader that the reader could have said for himself.

There's a fairy story called the 'The Shoemaker and the Elves' where this old cobbler keeps leaving leather out overnight and wakes up the next day, and there's a new pair of shoes. Co-authoring is a little like that. You send off the manuscript to your partner, and a few days later, you check your email, and hey, there's more book in here!

I cannot write in isolation. I write with people around me.

I am writing things on my own, but I really believe co-writing makes you a better writer.

I liked the idea of exposing the beams in collaborative novel. And there are many - especially in the crime world - there are many people working together: James Patterson and his stable of sub authors; and then there are like Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman and Jason Starr.

If you look at somebody like Bach, he didn't need collaborators to write for keyboards, cello, violin or anything else. I feel the same way about my music. The times that I have worked with other people, I've been very unhappy with the results.

How would Jonathan Lethem have obtained such a stellar endorsement for 'The Fortress of Solitude' from Michael Chabon, if not for the years they spent ghostwriting 'MAD' magazine fold-ins together?

The good news, when you write with another, is that you never have an empty page in front of you. The bad news is... you never have an empty page in front of you.

So we [with Kate DiCamillo] decided to give the friends an object and see what they did with it. The object was a sock and it went from there. Once we got going, once we got on a roll, it became very easy to work together and to figure out how to do it. We would meet for two-hour segments, usually from 10-12, two or three times a week. We met all one summer, and I think into the fall.

I rarely write by myself.