To this day, 'The Duke and I' remains particularly close to my heart; I felt it was the novel in which my writing took a huge leap forward.
The books that I wrote in my late teens and 20s, the little love stories, they were right from the heart.
I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.
Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming.
Everyone has a certain amount of bad writing to get out of their system.
Who learns most from a good book is the author.
Writing is the only thing in my life that doesn't get easier. It just doesn't.
Writing seems to be more difficult as you move through the years.
One of the things you get to do as a writer is that you get to learn new stuff all the time, and I hope that I'm a better writer when I'm 70 than I was when I was 30. That's one of the great things about a literary career.
It took me about 12 years to reach my million-word mark. The challenge now is to continue to challenge myself.
I always give my students exercises where they really have to open a vein and bleed all over the paper and that's the way you get the important characters. Sooner or later every writer worth reading writes a story his mother wouldn't read and having to get that stuff out is part of one's growth as a writer.
A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.
I guess I feel it's funny to be looked to for advice on writing when I am still taking in so much from other people.
When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I've come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.
The desire to write grows with writing.
I see my work as a continuum, moving from book to book.
At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.
I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before.
I started to write when I was eighteen or nineteen. However, until I was about twenty-three, I didn't take it that seriously.
Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction.
The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.
I wrote three books before I got one published. Most writers do. Have faith, and know that with each work you are getting better.
I'm hesitant to ever take on the crest of the veteran. So I don't know who I am to warn the younger writer about the perils to come. I think maybe the most dangerous influence is to think you have all the answers and should be giving counsel.
Every time I write a new book, I want to push myself to try something different.
