Charles Stross Quotes

As much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper than that.

The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know.

Following takes why. Transactions take what. It has to be real. It has to be the same for writing a book.

Writing a book isn’t an easy process nor is it always enjoyable, but it is one of life’s most satisfying achievements.

Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

A book, while it is being written, has an intense life of its own which you share.

A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.

Your book grows. The early part of your book is growing still while you are writing the later part of your book.

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

I love writing. I've always written journals. I loved writing the book on living alone.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song.

So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book.

The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.

I don't think I'll write a large novel again because it was like being in jail for me. Even though that's the funniest book I've ever written, it was the saddest period of my life.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

One of the things I have come up against time and again in my career is the notion that because a book is easy to read it was somehow easy to write.

Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.

I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.

By the time you write the last page you have done half the book. The other half tends to get done in about five weeks; I do several drafts, very, very furiously rewriting. I literally do more or less nothing else and I stick with it and go through it and I begin to hate it.

Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say