Betsy Byars Quotes

I usually am thinking about my next book the second I put the last dot on the previous one that I turn in.

Here's the secret to finishing that first book. Don't rewrite as you go.

For me, the whole process involves envisioning this book in my head as I'm working.

Having written Camp David as a drama, I could see the drama maybe a little more clearly when I wrote the book.

I try to create new characters in each book I write. That's what makes writing fun and interesting for me.

It's a great compliment that people think they're fast reads. It's always funny to me because it takes so long to get a book (written) -- for me, it's never quick.

In fact, I think every book I've written has been inspired by a real event.

A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.

For me, I would rather read a good book, from a contented author. I don't really care what it takes to produce that.

When I'm writing a book, I draw from my immediate experience, and my books are therefore almost a snapshot of where I am at that moment in my life.

Book ideas are like planes, lined up to approach the runway. Some never leave the gate, but others move quickly to the front of the line. It was like that with The Four Purposes. Honestly, I cannot remember the moment I had the idea for the book; perhaps because it emerged like a green shoot emerging from the soil of my subconscious. But it seemed important enough to begin the flow of words that eventually shaped themselves into this new book.

[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to draw these scraps of experience or conversation or memory to it. Eventually, it collects a book.

Three months seems to me quite a reasonable time to complete a book, if one can get right down to it.

If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.

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

I always try to stay as quiet as possible about a book until it's finished.

As for thinking time versus writing time, well, that's up to you. But - and I wish it were otherwise - books don't get written by thinking about them, they get written by writing them. And that's when you make discoveries about what you're writing. That's when you get the happy accidents.

I think that sense of unreality inspired me to write the story within the book that [August] Brill tells himself, one of the stories he tells himself.

I don't have a publisher yet, so I'm not in the process of that next stage and I don't know what that's going to look like. So I feel like I finished stage one [with my book].

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

But I begin to think the chief difficulty in writing a book must be to keep out what does not belong to it.

Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose.

Usually when I finish the draft of a book, I'm sure I'll never write another one. I'm just that tired and sick of myself. But then another idea starts percolating. It usually begins with the narrator's name, then some idea that intrigues me about her life or situation. I try to ignore it as long as I can, because I know when I start writing, I'll be right back into it, every single day. But eventually, I just have to. It's a compulsion!

Writing a book is quite an undertaking and I wouldn't want to do it just to do it.

There were several points where I would kind of turn to the book and say, "Get thee behind me." I don't think real novelists do that. But I make a distinction between prose that's very efficiency-minded (like, the minimum I can get away with), versus loosening the screws and letting the words spill out beautifully and so on.