All the rare and royal names Wormy sheepskin yet retains
To all librarians everywhere, God bless you.
You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing the best I can - buy me or not - but this is who I am as a writer.
As much as I like it when a book I'm writing speeds along, the downside can be that an author becomes too eager to finish and rushes the end. The end is even more important than the first page, and rushing can damage it.
I have a graduate degree from Penn State. I studied at Penn State under a noted Hemingway scholar, Philip Young. I had an interest in thrillers, and it occurred to me that Hemingway wrote many action scenes: the war scenes in 'A Farewell to Arms' and 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' come to mind. But the scenes don't feel pulpy.
A thriller must be thrilling. A mystery may or may not be a thriller depending on how much breathless emotion it has, as opposed to cerebral calculation.
". . . What if?" Through the alchemy of those two words, something new comes into the world.
I try to drum each day. It's therapeutic.
The entrance of the woman with equal rights into practical modern life, her new freedom, her finding herself side by side with men in the streets, offices, professions, factories, sports, and now even in political and military life, is one of those dissolutive phenomena in which, in most cases, it is difficult to perceive anything positive. In essence, all this is simply the renunciation of the woman's right to be a woman.
I'm smart enough to know when I've done something wrong, but I don't understand this. Guys are beating their wives, getting DUIs and doing drugs, and I get national attention for a Sharpie? People are personally attacking me, calling me a classless asshole because I did something creative during a game. Why?
If I have to climb to heaven on a ladder, I shall decline the invitation.