author mindset Quotes

I'm always trying. Between every book, I think, 'Well now, it's time to get down to the serious stuff.'

From time to time, as if heaven-sent to annoy, someone will ask me if I'm self-disciplined when it comes to my work. I usually look witheringly at them and snarl, 'What do you think?' I mean, how do you imagine anyone writes a quarter of a million words a year for publication?

I'm always working on my next novel, even when I'm not.

I find that when I write for children, I am more hopeful, less cynical. I don't use different words or a different sentence structure. I just hope more.

I've often wished when I started a book I knew what was going to happen. I talked to writers who write 80-page outlines, and I'm just in awe of that.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.

I think you get so wrapped up in the book you're currently writing, it's hard to think about anything else. But I know as soon as I'm done with this book, I'll move on to something else.

It's not at all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book. If I do that well, I feel, good tidings generally will follow and readers will stick with me.

I think anyone can do a book if they want to, it's just timing- wise.

I don't read my own reviews and I haven't for probably 15 years. I read other people's reviews, though.

I don't expect anything from reviews. Sometimes I am bemused by them.

I don't wait for inspiration. Writing is my job.

I've adjusted to this, that my books are not going to get unanimously good reviews.

I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer.

That's a long way of saying no, I'm always too bound up in thinking about the characters in whatever I'm working on and trying to make good to dwell on characters from previous books.

I didn't make 'The New York Times' bestseller list until 'Charmed Thirds,' and then again for 'Fourth Comings.' It gave me a certain validation, and it certainly helps position me for future books, but it's not something I think about on a daily basis.

Publishing is the final step in making a book; if I was afraid to publish one, I wouldn't write it in the first place.

You write your first draft with your heart and you re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

I'm always telling myself as I write that I'm not really writing a novel; I'm just going to fool around with a character or an idea.

I usually am thinking about my next book the second I put the last dot on the previous one that I turn in.

What’s strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature.

When I was writing Dune there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced.

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.