Aspiring Authors Quotes

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

I'm always amused when people point out that Benjamin's naivety about the publishing process is just so unbelievable in Starborn #1 since, of course, no aspiring writer in reality could ever be so naive.

That is the dream of all novelists-that one of their characters will become 'somebody.'

My advice to would-be young authors is to read a lot, write a lot, and not worry about creating a finished product. Keeping a journal is not a bad idea either.

As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers--a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of college students aspire to the writer's trade and where bare hundreds actually break through.

A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.

If you really want a prize, or if you really want applause, you should try to write as many books as humanly possible.

The never-ending competition between writers hasn't changed between 1868 and 2000. I used to belong to writers' workshops with other professionals, but that becomes impossible after a while. Everyone's on a different step of the career ladder. Jealousy doesn't have to erupt into murder and burying someone in Wells Cathedral, but it is always there.

I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word.

I envy other writers who claim to have a backlog of books they'd like to write.

Many people who want to be writers don't really want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print.

In waiting for the glorious moment of that first book contract, writers must have giant reservoirs of patience. Yet they must persevere because they don't know the destiny that is being worked out for them. They creep humbly along the ground, without the spacious aerial vision of their lives that would show them the destiny in store for them.

Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.

The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but they are not writing. You know, they really badly want to write a book but they are not writing it. The only advice I can give them is to just write it, get to the end of it. And, you know, if it's not good enough, write another one.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

Way back in 1989, I got lucky with my first published story when it was selected for the Journey Prize anthology. Then I got lucky three more times. It is astounding to see how many writers published in the anthology have gone on to publish great story collections and novels. The anthology is a windfall for both writer and reader.

When I turned thirteen and took a typing class, with typical early teen enthusiasm and total lack of critical ability, I started sending my stuff to publishers once I'd babysat long enough to earn the postage.

Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers. If they arrive at college with literary ambitions, they should be told that everything they have done since their first childhood poems, printed in the school paper, has been preparation for entering a long, long apprenticeship.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

We have to think bigger as writers. We have to try and change the world.

Too many people write books as a calling card.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

Before I had published anything, I still hung out with people who liked to write. None of us had published, so there was no talk about the business, and there was probably a lot more angsty talk back then. But these days maybe there are some more laments about the culture, but I would say no.