Authorial Journey Quotes

A lot of first novels are written long before they're actually put down on paper.

I started out as a poet who primarily wanted to write about image and moment. Over the years I've been trying to teach myself how to do plot and scene. My first story collection had the most issues with the plotlessness, and when I was writing my second collection I was teaching myself how to make things happen.

I started out as a writer of fiction, but nobody wanted to publish my work as a young man. So I decided to put my interest in the narrative writing of biographies.

When I wrote The Onion Field, I realized that my first two novels were just practice.

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

My first attempt at writing was very unstructured and formless, with shifting points of view. I was trying to understand how long form might work, and I realized I had something shapeless. It was a total car wreck. But I still felt I could pull it off. So I ditched that attempt and started writing in the opposite manner, in first person, with a driving narrative.

Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure.

The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.

Fiction came quite a while later. I began with short stories and fiction for children.

I had a series of terrible jobs, whatever would allow me to write for four hours during the day. During that time I wrote three novels - all of which were extraordinarily poor. I decided after that to go and get my MFA.

And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit in the eye of the sun, hit those keys, it's the best madness going, the centuries need help, the species cry for light and gamble and laughter. Give it to them. There are enough words for all of us.

I blundered into writing.

I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.

It is no fun at all to have been writing a book for seven or so years, especially when you've never published anything before.

At the age of twenty, having published nothing and having had little guidance in my reading, I decided that I wanted to write.

When I published my first book, a memoir, the experience taught me that writing something of any significant length was an endurance sport as much as anything else.

Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth.

I cannot recall any moment of clarity about becoming a writer. I always liked to read. That's what did it.

Most books germinate within you for a long time before they are ready to come out. I wrote several drafts of the novel over many years and when I finally got to the last one, it didn't take much time.

The usual run of children's books left me cold, and at the age of six I decided to write a book of my own. I managed the first line, 'I am a swallow.' Then I looked up and asked, 'How do you spell telephone wires?