My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.
I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.
I remember the days of sitting at book signings, playing with my pen when no one would come, and still I even then thought I was living the dream, because I had a book out.
Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.
I never considered myself a writer. I'm a teacher. In a way, I feel kind of... kind of guilty for all the people who are writers who hope to be on the best-seller list someday, who live for that and don't get it, and it came to me as a kind of free gift, like God coming to Abraham and announcing, 'I've chosen you!'
I'd go to a bookstore, and I'd flip through flap copy, and I'd think, 'If this gal can get published, I can get published.'
As a child, I felt that books were holy objects, to be caressed, rapturously sniffed, and devotedly provided for. I gave my life to them. I still do. I continue to do what I did as a child; dream of books, make books and collect books.
As far back as I remember, long before I could write, I had played at making stories. But not until I was seven or more, did I begin to pray every night, "O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!"
I dreamed of becoming a writer. And this dream is about to become a reality with the publication of my first, and hopefully not my last, children's book.
O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!
From when I was a kid I wanted to write. It was so important to me that I was writing my own material.
I always thought I was going to be a great poet, and go and live in New York, where the great poets lived - you know, where Whitman had walked the streets.
What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write... Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I was in love with the image of being a writer. Whatever. It had been a really bad idea. Because I couldn't write, at least not by the bluntly and frequently expressed standards of anyone in a position to offer any encouragement and feedback.
I was going to be the best failed novelist in Paris. That was certainly not the worst thing in the world that one could be.
I wanted to write a novel. At 12 I knew, I am a writer. I said it to nobody.
I always wanted to write novels, even before I had read a lot of novels or had a very good idea of what they were.
Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild.
The way a small child might dream of visiting Disneyland, I dreamed of writing books. Never did I think my poems would become that.
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.
When I first thought of being a writer I had visions of stacks of books in stores with my name on them, that sort of thing. But I never imagined this would be the reaction.
My relatives used to laugh when I talked of being a writer.
I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.
I dreamt of being a writer once I started to read. I started to write 'Bonjour Tristesse' in bistros around the Sorbonne. I finished it, I sent it to editors. It was accepted.
I wanted to be an author as far back as I can remember, mixed with occasional bouts of wanting to be a werewolf when I grew up. But mostly, when I daydreamed, it was about being an author.
I originally wanted to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, but failed.
