Author Guidance Quotes

At every writers' conference, you have the opportunity to hear from best-selling authors, top literary agents, and excellent editors who will demystify the publishing industry and give you great advice, no matter where you are in your writing career or what you're currently struggling with.

I am hoping to work with writers publishing books for first time, since I of course remember what that experience is like. It's all a bit of a mystery for new authors who don't know what to expect.

When a young writer comes up to me with an ambitious idea for a 20-book series, I usually tell him to maybe try something smaller to start off with.

The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author's attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful--and possibly the only--help that can be given.

I've had a dozen novels published and have made far more than a dozen mistakes. Which is why Randy Susan Meyers and I wrote a guidebook to help authors avoid making our mistakes.

Read good books. Read bad books - and figure out why you don't like them. Then don't do it when you write. If you are a science fiction or fantasy writer, going to conventions and attending panels is very useful.

An editor who is a mentor, advisor, and psychiatrist. Don't kid yourself-a good editor will make your book better.

Best selling authors are always worth listening to, even if you choose to ignore their advice.

I think publishers need to be the ones that publish the books and control that process: finding writers, helping them with their work, finding readers. I think writers need that.

I like to encourage young talented writers to try and help them get published and so forth, but that's all. That's the best I can do.

Margaret Atwood was the author who took me out of children's literature and guided me towards adult literature.

There were many times in my initial days as a writer when I had felt the need to talk to someone, to leverage on someone's experience, to learn from someone who had written and published a book.

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