Alan Dean Foster Quotes

I had been writing professionally since 1988.

I've been a professional writer for 20 years, and there are contours in that time, crescents and troughs.

I've been writing full-time since about 1984 - mostly magazine features and columns.

I've written since I was 10 years old, so I guess I'm self-taught. I've had some luck along the way, I must admit, and I've worked hard.

I spent 20 years of my career primarily being a writer for hire.

I like the idea of being a working writer, not of saying that it's going to take me 30 years to write my magnum opus.

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

I have written more than 100 novels and novellas since 1983 - I was first published in 1985. There was an overlap of three years with my teaching career, but finally I felt good enough about my writing career to quit teaching and write full time.

What's important about me is that I really have, in ways I never could have foreseen when I was young, a writing career that's reached a lot of different places.

They say you hit your stride as a writer at about 50. I'm hoping to do that.

I said to Ruth Rendell, 'When you've written as many books as you have, it's easier.' She said, 'No dear, it gets harder'.

I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'

Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years.

I did six series for the BBC and that was enough. I've been writing for ten years, which is more challenging artistically.

I think now I'm up to something like 85 different titles that I've published.

I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since.

Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

When I look back at my career as an author, I don't look at the first book that was ever published as to where my career began - I look to the first book that I ever wrote.

Since the moment I could hold a pencil, I have spent nearly all day every day writing. And there is not an age group that I have not written for. You can read me from birth 'til death.

I took my writing seriously, and it seemed to pay off.

One of the things you get to do as a writer is that you get to learn new stuff all the time, and I hope that I'm a better writer when I'm 70 than I was when I was 30. That's one of the great things about a literary career.

I've always wanted to be a part of that experience of writing to an audience that is just starting to fall in love with books. When I felt that my writing for adults had become cemented, I decided to write a YA series.

The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio.

I started submitting stories for publication when I was about 15, but it was many years before I sold anything. I don't make my living writing science fiction, so in that sense, I'm still not a pro.

I have always loved to read, and now that I have penned 10 novels and a few magazine articles, I have fallen seriously in love with writing stories and seeing them go out into the world. It's magical, you know?