14th July 2016 | for Creatives | novel writing, writing, writer-reader relationship, Donald Maass |
"Aren't the people who have had the most influence on you the ones who caused you to look at things in a new light? Bingo. Be that novelist."
"Each novel teaches me how to write it, and before I can truly understand what I'm writing, I need to imagine the one person to whom I'm whispering the story urgently."
"I'm inspired when I literally can't put a book down. I'll leave the dishes in the sink. I'll bore friends and family talking about people they don't know and situations they've never read. In short, I'm pitching to everyone around me. If a book connects with me to that extent, it will connect with others. The biggest seller of books is still word of mouth, and the most successful books are those people can't stop talkinga about, agents included."
"Write high-impact fiction ... Do it for you. Do it for me. The night is long. The hours of darkness are dull. We need more fireworks."
"For virtually all novelists, the challenge is to push farther, go deeper, and get mean and nasty."
"Writers and readers have a trust. You give me your time, and I'm going to give you a really good story that's provocative and it's going to make you think and it's going to make you close the book and have that feeling of catharsis: I wish I could spend more time with these characters. And if you're not there yet, don't put your book out there; it's a betrayal of the trust."
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