I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.
Personally, I'm a big reader, and I've never wanted any of my favorite novels to be made into movies.
My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
By reading a lot of novels in a variety of genres, and asking questions, it's possible to learn how things are done - the mechanics of writing, so to speak - and which genres and authors excel in various areas.
Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on the other, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not a few names which should rank high in the second class, while some would promote more than one of them to the first.
I almost always use first person voice in my novels. It has its limitations, but it gives a sense of immediacy that's hard to create with an anonymous, all-seeing narrator.
Journalism is a team sport. Writing novels is golf: it's you and the ball.
I freely admit that I took great license in writing 'The Dark Queen,' more so than my other historical romance novels. This is largely because I viewed the book as a fantasy novel as much as an historical. I do feel that writers should strive for as much accuracy as possible but, in the end, remember that we are writing fiction.
It's still incredibly hard. Not just honing my craft but kicking down doors, getting my work published. Early on, I could have wallpapered my house with all the rejection letters sent my way. I put thousands of hours and pages into four novels that never saw the light of day.
If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance.
Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.
On that other novels followed: but I still wrote fairy tales and dreamy poems of another world.
I've written six novels and four pieces of nonfiction, so I don't really have a genre these days.
I would be pleased if someone would invent a pill to remove my impatience, moodiness, and occasional bursts of anger. But if they did, I wouldn't be able to write my novels or paint.
Many fantasy novels - 'Lord of the Rings', for instance, or 'Lavondyss' by Robert Holdstock - are beautifully written. Geoff Ryman's 'The Child Garden' is exquisite and utterly beguiling. Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast' trilogy is an astonishing piece of multi-faceted storytelling. So quality of writing does not condemn the genre.
I think novels - or any art form - can have a powerful impact on people's perceptions of race, particularly if they draw attention to the absurd inconsistencies and stereotypes we all carry around with us and don't want to think about.
Time spent researching varies from book to book. Some novels require months, even years of research, others very little. I try to do most of my research before I begin but inevitably questions emerge during the writing.
I used the pen name because I knew I wanted to write better novels under my own name someday.
I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they're writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.
I've always been a big fan of utopian, future, new-world stories - 'V For Vendetta,' comic books, graphic novels.
Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.
'The Mortal Instruments' is based on a series of novels by Cassandra Clare; it has been a New York Times bestseller, so it is pretty popular.
For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don't intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as invitations to dance.
The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.
My dream remains to inform and entertain through fiction in the form of novels and movies that compete in the marketplace of ideas.
Many of the comedies I had made in Sweden were slightly based on semi-autobiographical experiences, so adapting novels was a very different experience.
Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.
All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.
I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.
If you're going to clutter up the world with more novels, you should do a little more than entertain people.
I spent most of the '60s, when I was starting to try to write novels, living and working in Greece and Turkey. These are countries where the ancient past is interfused with the daily present, and I remember being struck with wonder at the constant sense of continuity and connection, the reminders that lie in wait for you at every turn.
I do seem to have a lot of family secrets in my novels. I guess I'm one of those writers who is often writing about the same sort of themes, but taking different angles on them.
I write novels and other things.
The novels that have fascinated me most are the ones that have reached me less through the channels of the intellect or reason than bewitched me.
What I like in novels that I read and enjoy is interplay of theme: the mystery of how we seem to be so separate as human beings.
I don't really consider any of my novels 'crime' novels.
