Steven Amsterdam Quotes

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

In the summer of '80, Silhouette bought my first book.

When I settled to writing seriously, which would be in my 30s, I did expect to be published eventually, but my aspirations weren't very high. A published book and a few appreciative readers was my idea of heaven.

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 had no idea I'd end up writing four books when I completed 'Mortal Engines.' I didn't even think it would find a publisher.

For a lot of people, becoming an author is a change in occupation... they are coming from something that totally has nothing to do with this. If they are expecting to come into a room full of people praising them, then they are in the wrong place.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

Once 'Walk Two Moons' received the Newbery Medal, I decided to write full-time. Partly because there seemed to be an audience out there who wanted to read what I wanted to write, and partly because I could now support myself financially through writing.

I sold my very first novel when I was 24 or 25 years old.

I earned my writing stripes with a large man's shoebox overflowing with rejection slips... more than 100 before I got my first, 'Yes, we want this,' accompanied by a check.

When I went from being an academic to being a member of the community of writers some of my former colleagues did look on me with a certain resentment.

It took seven years from the day I decided I wanted to write fiction to actually getting a book published.

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 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.

I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.

I had always presumed that my first book would be published, but I never dreamt that I would write 15 bestsellers and have this wonderful life in America that I have entirely built for myself.

I'm like a unicorn; I'm a midlist writer who hasn't done anything else but write. But because I wasn't amazingly famous, I didn't become Stephanie Meyer, or even a huge literary name like a Jonathan Franzen or a Joshua Ferris.

After I'd been a lawyer for about five or six years, I started playing around with fiction.

Writing careers are short. For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely privileged.

I was twenty-seven when I began to write seriously, and after two years of rejections, my first book, 'The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo,' was accepted for publication.

I published 'Rules of Civility' while I was still working. It became a best seller. I was working on this book, and then I decided to retire.

After 'Click, Clack, Moo' was published, I was still practicing law and had no plans to make a career change.

Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.

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