Daniel Woodrell Quotes

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

Writing is a intensely personal activity. I can pen down my best thoughts when I'm alone. But when one is elevated into the stature of an author, you have to think about your books in terms of their business angle.

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks.

I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

I had a very realistic expectation of the level of success that it was possible to attain writing romance novels.

Once I started getting paid to be a writer and not having lots of other gross responsibilities, like making the puzzle or whatever, then my ambition changed, and I thought, 'Now I want to be a good writer.' And that became my ambition.

When 'The Shadow of the Wind' became a success I had already been a working writer, I'd been through the ups and downs, I'd seen how it worked.

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.

Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.

Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.

In the first year, 1988, I wrote and sold 3 novels.

I finished my first novel - it was around 300 pages long - when I was 16. Wrote one more before I got out of high school, then wrote the first Lincoln Perry novel when I was 19. It didn't sell, but I liked the character and I knew the world so I tried what was, in my mind, a sequel. Wrote that when I was 20, and that one made it.

I remain convinced that the most valuable use of time for a newly published author is to write a second book that's even better than the first, and a third that's better than the second, and on and on.

If you want to be a writer, you write. Everybody wants to get published. You gotta play your long game.

The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others.

Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.

I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business.

When you tell them you're a writer, they say, 'What have you written?' And then you've got to tell them what you've done. I don't ask a plumber what he does. Then I have to explain what I've done, and I haven't really, you know. I've just told some stories.

I didn't know I was gonna be a writer when I started out.

I know very well that one cannot become an author by just writing a book.

I like to write and that's why I write. I don't think about how much the book will sell.

I never set out to be a published writer.

I always grew up with the idea that in order to be a successful writer, I should have a book published.