I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.
The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.
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.
If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.
If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.
A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
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.
What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.
Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.
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.



























