Writing Variety Quotes

My cure for writer's block is to step away from the thing I'm stuck on, usually a novel, and write something totally different. Besides fiction, I write poetry, screenplays, essays and journalism. It's usually not the writing itself that I'm stuck on, but thing I'm trying to write. So I often have four or five things going at once.

The hardest part is not to repeat yourself. I don't really believe my core obsessions are going to change, but you need to look for ways to express them that are different. The main reason for doing that is not to bore yourself, and obviously, I don't want to bore readers.

Things happen in your life, and then you can write something else instead of the same three topics - like, how many times can we write about the clubs?

I move between the two: I write an adult novel, and then I write a children's book. I quite enjoy that. It's a nice change of pace each time.

Occasionally people ask me how it is I write different types of things, and my answer to that is it's very natural. You get bored writing one kind of thing all the time.

I think you can spread yourself across any number of genres when you're a writer as long as you have a deep, abiding love for each of them.

It's fun for me to try to write concise, compact things. It's a very good exercise for me. And I think it's important to try to do different things - change what I write about, and also the way I write. Otherwise, I'd just be repeating myself, which wouldn't be good for me or fair to my readers.

As much as I'm drawn to writing about teenage girls, I like the idea of having the freedom to branch out and write about different ages, for different ages.

I don't intend to write the same kind of book for the rest of my life because I feel I would not be satisfied only writing in one mode.

I have written in a lot of genres, that's true, and I'm not sure it's always served my career well.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you're sort of writing the same song over and over again.

I can't write in a whole lot of different styles, trying to please the highbrows one time and the lowbrows the next. I pretty much have a basic style I employ.

Anyone can sit down and write two pages of a novel, then forget about it, and a week later write five pages of a screenplay, then forget about it, and a week later start another novel... etc, etc.

Shorter work - personal essays and book reviews - allow me to take a break from working on a book, which is good for the book and for its author.

My focus will always be crime, but it might not always be fiction, nor always for adults, nor books entirely in prose. That's a lot of ground to cover, so I might as well begin.

I wouldn't like to just do one story or one type of stories all the time.

I used to write fiction, non-fiction, fiction, non-fiction and have a clear pattern because I'd need a break from one style when going into the next book.

Some people don't like my fiction, because they prefer the nonfiction. But moving around keeps the work fresh for me and, hopefully, for my one or two readers who follow me from book to book!

Each of my books is different from the last, each with its own characters, its own setting, its own themes. As a writer, I need the variety. I sense my readers do, too.

I don't consciously think of any certain direction when I'm writing. I only try not to be repetitive or redundant.

I could always write in a wide variety. My moods change same as reader's moods change. I really do love writing the historicals, however, but if that's all I did I would go crazy, same with any of the other kinds of books. I need variety.

I don't write the same book twice.

I always write tons of different styles.

Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?

One thing that worried me was how writers get categorized and so they end up having to write the same kind of book again and again. That is fine if it is what you want to do, but I would rather be locked in the trunk of my car with a weasel than write the same book every three years until I die.