If you write, one of the questions you’re always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer.
I’m dense when it comes to discouragement.
I’m always trolling for trivia.
Once you’ve invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story’s grown to around a half-million words and can’t be written as anything less than a trilogy.
There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause.
A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.
It’s possible to become so comfortable with one’s style and structure that one ceases to grow.
No one uses a ribbon typewriter any more, but your final draft is not the time to try to wring a few more sheets out of your inkjet cartridge.
When I’m not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I’m not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I’m reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.
Ideas aren’t magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.
