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I suspect that most authors don't really want criticism, not even constructive criticism. They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, infor...more

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I’m an author. We don’t want to lead. We don’t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and write it down and send it out into the world, and ge...more

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Start telling the stories that only you can tell. Because there will always be better writers than you, and there will always be smarter writers than ...more

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The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then ...more

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In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outs...more

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My people, we stay indoors. We have keyboards. We have darkness.

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If I were only allowed to read or enjoy art or listen to music made by people whose opinions and beliefs were the same as mine, I think the world woul...more

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It wasn’t brave because he wasn’t scared: it was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were ther...more

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Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now? And yet, things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths tha...more

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Yes, you're right. It's part of growing up, I suppose. You always have to leave something behind you.

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Yes, you're right. It's part of growing up, I suppose. You always have to leave something behind you.ü

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Richard put away the Narnia books, convinced, sadly, that they were an allegory; that an author (whom he had trusted) had been attempting to slip some...more

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He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.

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I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they alw...more

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Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own.