The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do.
One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I'm going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I'll have lost nothing-writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.
If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.
I never know what I'm going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.
The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one.
I’ve tried writing and the sentences come out fine, but I write a few pages and I don’t want to go on.
