My first published book, ‘Story of a Girl’, was the fourth book I wrote.
My stuff gets published in some countries as fiction and in some countries as fantasy. It’s just where they think it will do best in the bookshops.
Before I was published, I thought men read car manuals or books about football. But once I started having really serious conversations with male lovers of literature, I let go of that prejudice.
I know that I am very popular in Holland, in fact I have visited Amsterdam several times to publicize my books. I have a great publisher in Holland and they have published all of my books in Dutch.
There are always interesting, innovative, dynamic stories being written and being published. They’re not always being prominently published, but they’re being published.
There are stories still in existence that I wrote when I was five. However, I did not get published until I was seven.
When I first met my husband, he had a very good job – company car, pension plan, grudging respect from his staff – the lot. I, on the other hand, was badly paid and devoid of ambition. Then I had a couple of books published and confounded all expectations by starting to earn more than he did.
As a writer, you write the book, you give it to your editor, it’s copy edited, it’s published, it’s thrown out there, and then there’s a response.
There are a lot of bottlenecks to getting published. Publishers are only one of them. Having the time is another one. Feeling entitled is another one.
That was the hardest thing for me. When it was published that I was going to play Tommen, all the fans of the books were like, ‘Oh, he’s turning 16’ – that was the hardest thing: to play younger and show that.
Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books still needs encouragement, but this is true.
My first book was on the grittier side of life. A week before being published, I realized all of my main characters come from single households. That was something that, when I lived in South Bronx, that’s what it was like.
I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published.
At least I’m at peace with myself. I have done my best to write a book about what really happened there and why it happened and it’s done, it’s published. I won’t write another book on Vietnam.
It’s an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important… and to feel that you’re being published by people who really don’t get it and/or don’t really care.
Lloyd Alexander’s tales were written and published when I was in diapers. Decades later, they remain utterly timeless for me. I cannot recommend them enough.
I was born January 6, 1937, eight years after Wall Street crashed and two years before John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the plight of a family during the Great Depression.
It’s like a series of waves hitting you. First, getting excerpted in the ‘New Yorker’ last summer, then getting published, then the best-seller list, the award, the movie deal, now this, a Pulitzer.
Not long after I published my first book, I quickly found I was terrible at being interviewed.
My rule of writing is that no one can do what you can do, so jealousy or competitiveness are pointless. I am always happy when one of my sisters has a book published that I get to read.
