Janet Reid is a literary agent and she has a blog. It seems that many publishers, traditional as well as publish-on-demand, are Read More...
I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.
Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.
When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”
I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.
It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.
You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.
Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

























