Theodore Sturgeon Quotes

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

If you want to write the next great novel, but you think, No, this won't work because no one will buy it or it won't be any good, then you talk yourself out of taking a risk.

You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.

I would very much like to become a best-selling author.

I started out as a novelist and wrote several novels before deciding to publish one, and I fully intend to go back to the form.

You become a great writer by writing.

An author writes a book, and that's the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

I had already drafted the manuscript that would become my first book by the time I graduated from college, but I had no idea what to do with it.

Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead.

A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt.

I was twenty-seven when I came up with the idea for my first novel.

I try not to worry about rewriting books that worked well the first time. I'm too busy writing new books to worry about things that are already in print.

I became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box.

This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

I always wanted to be a writer... 'Critical Care' was my first published work. I was 34 when it came out. I was accumulating 'Critical Care' for years. I would go for a whole year and not touch it. And then I'd go back to it.

I wanted to be a literary writer, so I wrote story after story and sent them to 'The New Yorker.'

I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.

I had a novel in the back of my mind when I won an Ian St James story competition in 1993. At the award ceremony an agent asked me if I was writing a novel. I showed her four or five chapters of what would become 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and to my surprise she auctioned them off.

I don't think anybody submits their first story and sells right away.

Approaching my second novel was, admittedly, a bit of a struggle. But having an amazing team at Atheneum Books, especially my very patient, brilliant editor Namrata Tripathi, took a stressful situation and turned it into a really great learning experience for me.

I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing.

I never want to deal with a book once I'm finished writing.

I wrote lots of pages. I showed what I wrote to Iowa friends, and they said, 'Good start.' That was discouraging because I thought it was almost done.