Author's Growth Quotes

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

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

My earlier books, 'The Oath,' 'This Present Darkness' were pretty straight adventure. 'The Visitation' is like a deeper book, more thought-provoking. It probes at character more.

I write different kinds of sentences, depending on what the book is, and what the project is. I see my work evolving. I'm writing long sentences now, something I didn't use to do. I had some kind of breakthrough, five or six years ago, in Invisible, and in Sunset Park after that. I discovered a new way to write sentences. And I find it exhilarating.

Isaac Singer always wrote in Yiddish. He was so unsure of his English at the beginning that he was easy to edit and he learned fast.

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.

What I realized halfway through writing romance is that you start out intuitive, and you make all these choices mostly based on yourself and what you like and what talent you have, and... if you want to have any quality control over your product, you have to stop being intuitive and start being more of an analyst.

For years, I felt I was a novelist, but now I know I can write short fiction.

I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

If the work is poor, the public taste will soon do it justice. And the author, reaping neither glory nor fortune, will learn by hard experience how to correct his mistakes.

When a book of mine comes out, I instantly go hunting the net, not for praise, but for criticism, because that's how you learn, from people who don't have to be polite to you.

Short fiction isn't my natural form. It's taken a lot of work over the years to finally feel more comfortable writing stories under 80,000 words!

I taught everyone a very bad lesson at my publisher because they actually gave me deadlines this time and I'm now meeting them. I used to say, "Here's my book; it's six years late." I'm so much faster now, and work differently. With all the years of writing, I think I still draft as obsessively, but I think back to writing. On your first story, you start at draft one. On your second story, you start at draft ten. On your third story, you start at draft one hundred. If you need a hundred and eight drafts, you may write eight instead of a hundred and eight.

And you can tell the writers who do it - Robert Stone, for example, who with each new novel is doing something new. I appreciate that in other writers.

I would love to take another stab at really smart, speculative sci-fi - my first was a bit of a stumble. I look forward to getting another chance.

When it is my editor telling me how to rewrite a story, I listen and do what she asks because I have learned that I get a better book in the end. I can't say I'm happy when I read that editorial letter. It is always a little painful and scary. But I have learned that - bit by bit - I can make the changes and do the work.

Nothing is so beneficial to a young author as the advice of a man whose judgment stands constitutionally at the freezing-point.

Really, I prefer not to read my early books. Not that I don't like them, but I don't recognize myself anymore, like an old actor watching himself as a young leading man.

My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.