Michael Scott Quotes

Science fiction is a big, big love of mine. I would love to get into that at some point.

In any genre you're working in, you can always find a way to tell a particular kind of story. I love fantasy; I love science fiction. I love all kinds of fiction, in fact.

Personally, I really enjoy sci-fi. I watch it, I read comic books, and I play video games. I love this kind of world, so to be able to work in it is a dream. I enjoy it. It's all good.

It's great to be able to work on some science fiction. I love the genre.

Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.

Some writing courses will advise you to write what you know. I've always thought this is very odd advice ... because it means, for example, that I should not be writing about Nicholas Flamel, because I didn't live in France in the 15th Century, I was not an alchemyst, am not immortal (despite the rumours) and do not know magic.

Growing up, I didn't really read a lot of comics; we didn't really have the money to get them. But I grew up a universal fan of fantasy and sci-fi and watching a lot of TV. There's always this question of 'Are you a fan of sci-fi or fantasy?' But can't you be a fan of both? We love everything fantasy, my wife and I.

'Jurassic Park' and 'Star Wars' shoved me into loving sci-fi and film in general when I was a barely coherent 3-year-old. And 'Lord of the Rings' took me to another planet entirely. Before that series, I knew I loved writing, but after, I knew that I had to write.

I've been writing since 1973. I've written nonfiction things of that nature, but I'm probably best known for crime fiction and, to some extent, horror fiction.

As an adult I wasn't dying to participate in sci-fi projects.

Genre is great and I love sci-fi.

Sci-fi's great, but you don't have to hit people over the head with it when you're making a social comment. It just inherently exists within the fabric of the story.

I'm very fascinated by genre.

I love crime, I love sci-fi and many other things.

My advice to young writers would be to write every day, even if it is only a few words. Get yourself on the habit of writing and it will become a lifelong one. And find a place to write where you are physically comfortable. You can't concentrate if you aren't. Ernest Hemingway could only write standing up, and Truman Capote could only write lying down!

The best writing advice I had was [in] ‘Heinlein’s Rules for Writers’ by (American science fiction author) Robert A. Heinlein. His first rule is that you must write, and I was already doing that, but his second rule is, ‘You must finish what you write,’ and that had a big impact on me.

When I was about twenty-one, I published a few poems. Maybe I wrote a couple of stories before, but I really began to write stories in my mid-thirties. My kids were still little, and they were in school and day care, and I had begun to think a lot about wanting to tell some stories and not being able to do it in poetry.

The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.

There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.

The best advice on writing was given to me by my first editor, Michael Korda, of Simon and Schuster, while writing my first book. 'Finish your first draft and then we'll talk,' he said. It took me a long time to realize how good the advice was. Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole, do you know what you have to fix.

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.

I am not a science fiction writer. I am a fantasy writer. But the label got put on me and stuck.

It's hot tonight and half the neighborhood is drunk. the other half is dead. if I have any advice about writing poetry it's - don't. I'm going to send out for some fried chicken.

I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.

I was much more into romance as a teenager and it's been a kind of new discovery for me to learn about sci-fi adventure. I think it's a really interesting genre and it's all about imagination. It's boundless what you can do in these stories.