#writing-books

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I do not think consciously of children [when writing] … I do know that children read me more intelligently than adults do.

Alan Garner

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Words are the writer's sorcery, our dark arts and our sleight of hand. They're our enchantment and our temptation

Karl Wiggins, Self-Publishing In the Eye of the Storm

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Writing on dark themes is not as easy as one might think; you have to live the worst and the most terrifying nightmares, again and again, till they consume you entirely and become an inseparable part of you that you start dreading.

Heena Rathore P.

[thepersonalwords]

When I had my girls, I knew what magic felt like for the first time. I had created people who didn't exist before. Now I write for the same reason. Creating people and their life's stories through my writing is as close to magic as I'll ever get again.

Dori Ann Dupré

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The biggest difference between writing a movie and writing a novel? No one ever tries to sleep with me to get into one of my novels.

Mylo Carbia, The Raping of Ava DeSantis

[bikeshed-blog]

As the author, you can expect to make about a dollar on every copy that sells. The publisher makes several times that, so they make a nice profit with as few as, say, five thousand copies sold. Books that sell ten or fifteen thousand are rare, and considered strong sellers. So let's say you strike gold. After working on your book for a year or more, are you going to be happy with a payday of ten to fifteen grand? Incidentally, don't expect your royalty check right away. The publisher gets paid first, by the bookstores, and the publisher may then hold on to your money for several months before they part with any of it. Yes, this is legal: it's in the publisher's contract. Not getting paid may be a bummer for you, but it's a great deal for the publisher, since they make interest on the float (all the money they owe to their authors) - which is another profit stream. They'll claim one reason for the delay is the sheer administrative challenge of cutting a check within three months (so many authors to keep track of! so many payments!)... a less ridiculous reason is that they have to wait to see whether bookstores are going to return unsold copies of your book for a full refund.

Coding Horror: Coding Horror: The Book