But it seemed to me that as soon as you have computer storage you could put every point you wanted in - make the ones that are less relevant to your central topic, further away or allow the central topic to move as the reader proceeded.
I like to build places online where readers can have productive conversations about books.
People are reading more and writing more because of the internet. So the virtual world is a way for me to listen to my readers and interact with my readers. It is a way that they can voice their opinion.
To me, it's a great day every time I receive a letter from somebody who climbed inside one of my books, inhabited it for a while, learned a little something, and emerged grateful.
Engage with your readers as often as you can. Readers, myself included, want a relationship with everyone in their lives, even the people behind the pages of their favorite books.
My books are inert as cordwood till a reader's imagination ignites one and an old flame jumps to life.
The better the book the more room for the reader.
I'm looking forward to coming to SleuthFest I've heard so many good things about it from my writer friends. I'm looking forward to seeing my buddies and talking to readers who want to know about the way I work.
I don't like to think of my readership as 'fans,' a word which has always suggested a kind of power relationship I'm uncomfortable with.
If the book is second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous readers, fellow-travellers who have recorded their passage by means of scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a certain page.
I always like to break out and address the audience. In 'The History Boys', for instance, without any ado, the boys will suddenly turn and talk to the audience and then go back into the action. I find it more adventurous doing it in prose than on the stage, but I like being able to make the reader suddenly sit up.
I'm very aware of the presence of a reader, and that probably is a reaction against a lot of poems that I do read which seem oblivious to my presence as a reader.
My favorite aspect of being an author has always been visiting different communities and meeting my readers face to face.
Don't seek to be published, seek to be read.
This is something I learned when I was working at a newspaper: when you put something on paper, whether it's words or pictures, and it's staring back at the reader, they are now alone in the room with them for as long as it takes them to turn the page. Whereas on television, the images fly by.
Writing is solitary, so I love going out once in a while and meeting my readers. I'll often hang with them after a signing for some beers. They're invariably bright!
I'm a fan of meeting readers face to face, at reader events, where we're able to sit down and take some time to talk.
The book is not completely written until someone else has read it.
Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.
A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling.
Readers are made by readers - it is so obvious it is almost banal to say it.
One thing we never did with 'Bad Company' was talk down to our reader. And we certainly don't do that with the new story, 'Bad Company, First Casualties.'
Our amended Constitution is the lodestar for our aspirations. Like every text worth reading, it is not crystalline. The phrasing is broad and the limitations of its provisions are not clearly marked. Its majestic generalities and ennobling pronouncements are both luminous and obscure. This ambiguity of course calls forth interpretation, the interaction of reader and text. The encounter with the Constitutional text has been, in many senses, my life's work.
My relationship with my readers is somewhat theatrical. One of the main things I try to do in my work is delight my readers.
I go to a lot of conferences and conventions to meet with readers directly.
