There Are Things You Don't Want To

Can't All Beasts Be Tamed?

It Doesn't Matter If I'm Only To Be Gone Four Days, As In This Case; I Take Six Months' Supply Of Reading Material Everywhere. Anyone Who Needs Further Explication Of This Eccentricity Can Find It Usefully Set Out In The First Pages Of W. Somerset Maugham's Story "the Book-bag.

Write What You Want To Read. The Person You Know Best In This World Is You. Listen To Yourself. If You Are Excited By What You Are Writing, You Have A Much Better Chance Of Putting That Excitement Over To A Reader.

When You Write Your First Novel You Don't Really Know What You're Doing. There May Be Writers Out There Who Are Brilliant, Incisive And In Control From Their First 'once Upon A Time'. I'm Not One Of Them. Every Once Upon A Time For Me Is Another Experience Of White-water Rafting In A Leaky Inner Tube. And I Have This Theory That While The Story Council Has Its Faults, It Does Have Some Idea That If Books Are Going To Get Written, Authors Have To Be Able To Write Them.

But I'm Going To Try To Tell The Truth. Except For The Parts I'm Leav­ing Out, Because There's Still Stuff I'm Just Not Going To Tell You. Get Used To It.