Literary Process Quotes

Having your book edited is like watching your cat being operated on. It's uncomfortable and someone is probably going to get hurt. Most likely the cat. But in the end, things work out for the best and your cat is better it. And then your cat gets released in hardcover, and you have to read all of his reviews.

Writing a book is so much harder than I imagined.

When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.

Try to think of writing as a gift - more complexly put: it is the curse and the cure.

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.

The desire to create literature leads to frights, grunts, and coy looks.

I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk.

I was really the first-line editor of the 'House of Night' series. I didn't write that much of the story, and I didn't know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

'Constructed Worlds' comes from a novel draft that I wrote in my early twenties and reread/revised only in my late thirties.

I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.