Tag Archives: novelist

Elizabeth George (b. February 26): “I have to know the killer…”

26 Feb
george

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465739058/

Elizabeth George, born 26 February 1949, is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. 11 of her novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Quotes on writing:

  1. It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
  2. I wish that I’d known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.
  3. I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can’t be taught. Frankly, I don’t understand this point of view.
  4. I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
  5. Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they’re in. It’s a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
  6. Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.
  7. Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.

Tags: , , , ,

Lee Child (b. October 29): “Writing is show business for shy people” & other quotes

29 Oct
child2

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465056398/

Lee Child, born 29 October 1954, is a British thriller writer best known for his Jack Reacher novels.

10 quotes on writing:

  1. Don’t get it right – get it written.
  2. Writing is show business for shy people.
  3. It’s a kind of Zen question: if you write a book and no one reads it, is it really a book?
  4. The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.
  5. Read, read, read. You can’t get anywhere unless you’re an obsessive, continuous reader of other stuff.
  6. Writers become writers because they love words and language, and attempting a non-native style is all part of the fun.
  7. I have the ‘thing’ worked out – the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.
  8. Male authors always take care to make their heroes at least one inch taller than they are, and considerably more muscular. Just as female authors give their heroines better hair and slimmer thighs.
  9. I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until ‘The End’.
  10. So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book – driven by some very real feelings of desperation – and it worked.

Tags: , , ,

Kingsley Amis (b. April 16): “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”

16 Apr

(c) Gordon Stuart; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Kingsley Amis (born 16 April 1922, died 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, and social and literary criticism. He was the father of English novelist Martin Amis.

Quotes:

  1. If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.
  2. No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children.
  3. The novelist always has favorites, and often he’s a minor character.
  4. Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.
  5. It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with.
  6. Writing for me is to a large extent self-entertainment, and an only child is driven to do that.
  7. No writer, especially a young and unknown writer, resents publicity of any kind – whatever he may say.
  8. You can’t imagine how much I miss the intellectual stimulus of teaching English literature to young people. More than I ever realized – I do miss it.
  9. I don’t get up very early. I linger over breakfast reading the papers, telling myself hypocritically that I’ve got to keep up with what’s going on, but really staving off the dreadful time when I have to go to the typewriter. Then I go on until about eight-thirty PM and I always hate stopping.
  10. I’ve been trying to write for as long as I can remember. But those first 15 years didn’t produce much of great interest. I mean, it embarrasses me very much to look back on my early poems – very few lines of any merit at all and lots of affectation. But there were quite a lot of them. That’s a point in one’s favor.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Elizabeth George (b. February 26): “I have to know the killer…”

26 Feb
george

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465739058/

Elizabeth George, born 26 February 1949, is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. 11 of her novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Quotes on writing:

  1. It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
  2. I wish that I’d known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.
  3. I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can’t be taught. Frankly, I don’t understand this point of view.
  4. I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
  5. Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they’re in. It’s a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
  6. Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.
  7. Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.

Tags: , , , ,

Lee Child (b. October 29): “Writing is show business for shy people” & other quotes

29 Oct
child2

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465056398/

Lee Child, born 29 October 1954, is a British thriller writer best known for his Jack Reacher novels.

10 quotes on writing:

  1. Don’t get it right – get it written.
  2. Writing is show business for shy people.
  3. It’s a kind of Zen question: if you write a book and no one reads it, is it really a book?
  4. The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.
  5. Read, read, read. You can’t get anywhere unless you’re an obsessive, continuous reader of other stuff.
  6. Writers become writers because they love words and language, and attempting a non-native style is all part of the fun.
  7. I have the ‘thing’ worked out – the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.
  8. Male authors always take care to make their heroes at least one inch taller than they are, and considerably more muscular. Just as female authors give their heroines better hair and slimmer thighs.
  9. I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until ‘The End’.
  10. So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book – driven by some very real feelings of desperation – and it worked.

Tags: , , ,

Kingsley Amis (b. April 16): “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”

16 Apr

(c) Gordon Stuart; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Kingsley Amis (born 16 April 1922, died 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, and social and literary criticism. He was the father of English novelist Martin Amis.

Quotes:

  1. If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.
  2. No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children.
  3. The novelist always has favorites, and often he’s a minor character.
  4. Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.
  5. It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with.
  6. Writing for me is to a large extent self-entertainment, and an only child is driven to do that.
  7. No writer, especially a young and unknown writer, resents publicity of any kind – whatever he may say.
  8. You can’t imagine how much I miss the intellectual stimulus of teaching English literature to young people. More than I ever realized – I do miss it.
  9. I don’t get up very early. I linger over breakfast reading the papers, telling myself hypocritically that I’ve got to keep up with what’s going on, but really staving off the dreadful time when I have to go to the typewriter. Then I go on until about eight-thirty PM and I always hate stopping.
  10. I’ve been trying to write for as long as I can remember. But those first 15 years didn’t produce much of great interest. I mean, it embarrasses me very much to look back on my early poems – very few lines of any merit at all and lots of affectation. But there were quite a lot of them. That’s a point in one’s favor.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Elizabeth George (b. February 26): “I have to know the killer…”

26 Feb
george

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465739058/

Elizabeth George, born 26 February 1949, is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. 11 of her novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Quotes on writing:

  1. It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
  2. I wish that I’d known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.
  3. I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can’t be taught. Frankly, I don’t understand this point of view.
  4. I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
  5. Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they’re in. It’s a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
  6. Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.
  7. Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.

Tags: , , , ,

Lee Child (b. October 29): “Writing is show business for shy people” & other quotes

29 Oct
child2

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465056398/

Lee Child, born 29 October 1954, is a British thriller writer best known for his Jack Reacher novels.

10 quotes on writing:

  1. Don’t get it right – get it written.
  2. Writing is show business for shy people.
  3. It’s a kind of Zen question: if you write a book and no one reads it, is it really a book?
  4. The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.
  5. Read, read, read. You can’t get anywhere unless you’re an obsessive, continuous reader of other stuff.
  6. Writers become writers because they love words and language, and attempting a non-native style is all part of the fun.
  7. I have the ‘thing’ worked out – the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.
  8. Male authors always take care to make their heroes at least one inch taller than they are, and considerably more muscular. Just as female authors give their heroines better hair and slimmer thighs.
  9. I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until ‘The End’.
  10. So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book – driven by some very real feelings of desperation – and it worked.

Tags: , , ,

Kingsley Amis (b. April 16): “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”

17 Apr

(c) Gordon Stuart; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Kingsley Amis (born 16 April 1922, died 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, and social and literary criticism. He was the father of English novelist Martin Amis.

Quotes:

  1. If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.
  2. No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children.
  3. The novelist always has favorites, and often he’s a minor character.
  4. Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.
  5. It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with.
  6. Writing for me is to a large extent self-entertainment, and an only child is driven to do that.
  7. No writer, especially a young and unknown writer, resents publicity of any kind – whatever he may say.
  8. You can’t imagine how much I miss the intellectual stimulus of teaching English literature to young people. More than I ever realized – I do miss it.
  9. I don’t get up very early. I linger over breakfast reading the papers, telling myself hypocritically that I’ve got to keep up with what’s going on, but really staving off the dreadful time when I have to go to the typewriter. Then I go on until about eight-thirty PM and I always hate stopping.
  10. I’ve been trying to write for as long as I can remember. But those first 15 years didn’t produce much of great interest. I mean, it embarrasses me very much to look back on my early poems – very few lines of any merit at all and lots of affectation. But there were quite a lot of them. That’s a point in one’s favor.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Elizabeth George (b. February 26): “I have to know the killer…”

26 Feb
george

pinterest.com/pin/39406565465739058/

Elizabeth George, born 26 February 1949, is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. 11 of her novels have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

Quotes on writing:

  1. It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
  2. I wish that I’d known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn’t have found it so frightening to write.
  3. I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can’t be taught. Frankly, I don’t understand this point of view.
  4. I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.
  5. Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they’re in. It’s a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
  6. Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.
  7. Lots of people want to have written; they don’t want to write. In other words, they want to see their name on the front cover of a book and their grinning picture on the back. But this is what comes at the end of a job, not at the beginning.

Tags: , , , ,

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