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When the work is the best work, it's more like being a secretary than it is a creative person, you just sort of take the stuff down.

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The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.

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When you write, you want to get rid of the world, do you not? Of course you do. When you're writing, you're creating your own worlds.

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I think you will find that, if you continue to write fiction, every character you create is partly you.

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I gradually realized that I was seeing another example of creative ebb, another step by another art on the road that may indeed end in extinction.

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Some part of me knew from the first that what I wanted was not reality but myth.

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But in the wake of 'Bullet,' all the guys wanted to know was, 'How's it doing? How's it selling?' How to tell them I didn't give a flying fuck how it ...more

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What Writing Is: Telepathy, of course.

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The gotta, as in: “I think I’ll stay up another fifteen-twenty minutes, honey, I gotta see how this chapter comes out.” Even though the guy who says i...more

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Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can...more

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The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part o...more