Stewart O'Nan Quotes

You always hope you'll surprise somebody with the work. If you write something human and appealing, the perfect reader could be anyone.

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

I am, really, a great writer; my only difficulty is in finding great readers.

I have a really good idea for a novel and would like to just kind of try my hand at fiction. I'm starting to kind of get a really good body of work going from a literary standpoint. As long as the audience is there, man, I'll keep cranking them out.

Before Arthur, I'd dismissed altogether writing fiction. You only have so many semi-sharp arrows in your quiver, I'd told myself, and I was not going to be able to write a novel.

If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.

I never thought of myself as a writer.

I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me.

Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen.

I stopped being an engaged journalist and became a disengaged novelist.

My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader.

When I'm writing, I don't really have much other guide than, 'As a reader, how would I respond to this?'

If you have some natural talent and really want to write, you should read the books of someone who's very successful in your genre. You don't want to plagiarize, but you want to learn from that author.

I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.

I don't really think about genre. I like to write books that I'd love to read myself.

Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game, that would unlock Tolstoy-mode, enabling me to crank out canon-worthy novellas before lunch.

The only way to be a novelist, to think that you can create something others will give themselves up to for a dozen hours or more, is to have psychotic self-belief.

With a novel, no matter where I am in it, I'm fretting about it. Every time I write a book, it starts with great forward momentum. Then there seems to be a period where it slows down a bit, and other things intervene. Then I gain momentum.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am.

There are people who say they want to write novels. They think, 'I'll learn my craft on the romance novel.' If you don't love the genre, it's going to show, and it's not going to be a good book.

I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels.

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know.

The only other thing which I think is important is: Don't write a book or start a book with the expectation of communicating a message in a very important way.