So you need to deliver a speech, let’s say 20 minutes long, to salespeople. You’ve got a new product ready to push out to Read More...
The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
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.
To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
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.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
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.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

























