What I discovered is I don't like to repeat lead characters because one of the most pleasurable things in a book to me is learning about the lead.
I read. I order books from the States. I literally go into bookstores, close my eyes, and take things off the shelf. If I don't like the book after a bit, I don't finish it. But I like to be surprised.
There are two methods for the literary study of any book - the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view.
In one book, CACHALOT, just for my own amusement, every character is based directly on someone I have known.
Years of my life were lived knowing that I'd get a book out of them one day.
I've never written a children's book, but when people meet me for the first time and I say I write books, they invariably reply, 'Children's books?' Maybe it's something about my face.
I call my golden retriever Cara my 'white wolf.' She's changed my attitude and made me write this book where the wolf is the hero, not the villain.
'Illustrado' is not an autobiography. Only the ideas are autobiographical; the ideas of bitterness, frustration, unchanging society, an individual lost, social awkwardness... The book satirises archetypes from across Filipino society, and I felt that the least I could do was offer myself up, too.
I had English grammar book and started to teach myself. I read 'Catcher in Rye,' in Russian. I was amazed at freedom in 'Catcher in Rye!' Freedom to have those perceptions of life!
I was never confident about finishing a book, but friends encouraged me. When I finished my first book, it was accepted by a publisher right away and became an instant bestseller. One male critic called it the most shocking book he ever read.
I didn't and don't go to Internet for any business purposes. The book sales for me by this point are way beyond any influence I might have, positively, or others might have, negatively.
I've been fortunate enough to write a book and travel the country to sign and sell it, so I can safely say that a five-second burst of conversation while you're scribbling your name, over and over, is not the most reliable way to bond with Americans.
When I wrote 'The Interestings,' I wanted to let time unspool, to give the book the feeling of time passing. I had to allow myself the freedom to move back and forth in time freely, and to trust that readers would accept this.
It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it?
For years I drove cross-country, back and forth a dozen times, sometimes on book tour, sometimes just to get lost and found.
I went to a seminar early in my career on the craft of storytelling by Robert McKee. It was really life altering. There are basic principles on how to craft an engaging story and he covers them well. He's got a book out, 'Story,' that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in improve their storytelling.
When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.
We didn't have much, but I was raised to believe if you had books, you had a lot. My grandfather and my parents made me and my twin brother Kiel read at least a book a week.
People say if you're doing an art project, that's different from a book, but I honestly don't see it. I try and try, and I just don't.
What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.
I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.
Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order?
One of the great upsides to a national book tour is the chance to break out of television's cocoon and interact directly with the American people.
What I think is interesting is that the more you do, you have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can't do. And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches.
In late 1999, I was walking down Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks with my late producing partner Sharyn Lane after a day of editing 'Sordid Lives.' We passed the Psychic Book Store and decided to go in and get a reading. We weren't believers, but what the hell? We needed a sign.
I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.
I change my method and field of reference from book to book because I can never believe in the same thing two times running.
I've been really fortunate in that I guess I was hired to do 'A Cook's Tour;' I was already a known quantity, meaning I had written a really obnoxious book and nobody expected me to be anyone that I wasn't already.
I receive emails from readers that both break my heart and give me a profound sense of connection. Several months ago, I received an email from a teacher who told me that 'Legend' was the first book one of her troubled young students had ever read to the end. He cried when he finished it. Stories like that stay with you forever.
In the biographical novel, there's only one person involved. I, the author, spend two to five years becoming the main character. I do that so by the time you get to the bottom of Page 2 or 3, you forget your name, where you live, your profession and the year it is. You become the main character of the book. You live the book.
When I was a kid, I read many of my mom's books. Sometimes, there were mysteries, but there were no delineations, and my mother never talked about book genres. Nor did we differentiate genres in school.
I'm concerned about a lot of serious border issues. This book is about the border reality and the struggles of the undocumented worker.
When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
It took seven years from the day I decided I wanted to write fiction to actually getting a book published.
Thousands of books are published every year in India, and it's becoming more difficult to stand out and get people to buy the books. The only way to get people notice the book is to create a buzz much before it's released.
It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.
