“A screenwriter heard me read from my novel 'The Wishbones' when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They asked to take a look, and my life changed pretty dramatically as a result.” LooksStillsSchoolResultsNovelProgressHeardChangedHigh SchoolHollywoodElectionProducersLife ChangingScreenwritersDrawersWishbones Author:Tom Perrotta
“I used to think that: whenever I heard that someone had taken 10 years to write a novel, I'd think it must be a big, serious book. Now I think, 'No - it took you one year to write, and nine years to sit around eating Kit Kats.” ThinkingWritingYearsBookBigsUsedNovelTakenHeardSeriousEatingNineNine Years Author:Ian Rankin
“Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there - that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.” GivingWellsFactsMightFeltQualityNovelHeardEmotionalDramaPagesEarsDeedsMoodAurasInexplicableHigh Quality Book:Not Under Forty Source: Not Under Forty
“Freud believed that our dreams sometimes recapitulate a speech, a comment we've heard or something that we've read. I always had compositions in my dreams. They would be a joke, a piece of a novel, a witticism or a piece of dialogue from a play, and I would dream them. I would actually express them line by line in the dream. Sometimes after waking up I would remember a snatch or two and write them down. There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue.” WantWritingTwoSometimesPlayDreamWould BeRememberLinesNovelPiecesHeardSpeechJokesWake UpDialogueCommentWakingCompositionOur Dreams Author:David Mamet
“I've heard Stephen King say that when you write a novel you end up revealing everything about yourself.” WritingEndsNovelHeardKingsAbout YourselfRevealing Author:Ernest Cline
“You, and in fact quite a lot of your generation, have in some way been exiled from that particular sanctuary. It's become almost impossible for someone to "go mad" in the classical sense. At one time people conveniently "went mad" and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard.” PeopleWayCharacterFactsLevelsNovelImpossibleGenerationsHeardParticularMadCaughtPsychologicalHipsInsanityIntimateOne TimeSymptomsSanctuary Author:Ken Kesey
“Novel-writing is a highly skilled and laborious trade. One does not just sit behind a screen jotting down other people's conversation. One has for one's raw material every single thing one has ever seen or heard or felt, and one has to go over that vast, smoldering rubbish-heap of experience, half stifled by fumes and dust, scraping and delving until one finds a few discarded valuables. Then one has to assemble these tarnished and dented fragments, polish them, set them in order, and try to make a coherent and significant arrangement of them.” PeopleWritingTryingDoeOrderFeltBehindsHalfNovelHeardMaterialsConversationTradeScreensSignificantDustArrangementsFragmentsPolishRubbishNovel WritingRaw MaterialsDiscardedScrapingDelving Author:Evelyn Waugh
“Eighty percent of all novels are bought by women, or so I've heard.” NovelHeardPercentEighty Author:Bonnie Jo Campbell
“I've heard some readers saying they wished the story was longer, and I completely understand that desire - we all like to sink into a nice, long novel.” LongStoriesDesireNovelNiceHeardReader Author:Theodora Goss