novelist

As you write your novel, you gradually start thinking like some of your characters in it. And at times the writer may lose himself completely in some character.

The world is a better place when you smile.

Persons curious in chronology may, if they like, work out from what they already know of the Wimsey family that the action of the book takes place in 1935; but if they do, they must not be querulously indignant because the King's Jubilee is not mentioned, or because I have arranged the weather and the moon's changes to suit my own fancy. For, however realistic the background, the novelist's only native country is Cloud-Cuckooland, where they do but jest, poison in jest: no offence in the world.

There is one myth about writers that I have always felt was particularly pernicious and untruthful__he myth of the "lonely writer," the myth that writing is a lonely occupation, involving much suffering because, supposedly, the writer exists in a state of sensitivity which cuts him off, or raises him above, or casts him below the community around him. This is a common cliché, a hangover probably from the romantic period and the idea of the artist as a Sufferer and a Rebel.Probably any of the arts that are not performed in a chorus-line are going to come in for a certain amount of romanticizing, but it seems to me particularly bad to do this to writers and especially fiction writers, because fiction writers engage in the homeliest, and most concrete, and most unromanticizable of all arts. I suppose there have been enough genuinely lonely suffering novelists to make this seem a reasonable myth, but there is every reason to suppose that such cases are the result of less admirable qualities in these writers, qualities which have nothing to do with the vocation of writing itself.

A novelist is essentially a person who covers distance through his patience, slowly, like an ant. A novelist impresses us not by his demonic and romantic vision, but by his patience.

The pleasures of being a novelist are many. _But the greatest by far is the manner in which I live through my characters; experiencing every detail of their story as it unfolds gradually and personally within my own creative psyche. _I'm like a cat with untold lives, because each new book is my rebirth.

There are days when writing is within my power and a story unfolds along a_course I've already chosen. _And then there are days when the words breathe on their own and take me by the hand, leading me along unfathomed paths. _Either way, the end result is this author's fairytale.

As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.

A deed done to others, but for yourself is not a worthy one at all. Instead, place another before you; in this way, you can be sure your moral compass always points North.

With the right tools, you can write anything ...

Love is something that is beyond us. We can't anticipate love. When, where and with whom we fall in love is coincidental and wonderful for the same reason.

Life is full of beautiful moments. Live your life to the fullest. And do what youlove.

Being a novelist is not the sort of thing we can shut off. It infests every bit of us until we lose the boundary between Person and Writer, like one of those color charts where it is impossible to say where the blue stops and the red begins.

The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.

On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it?

You write once and you can call yourself a writer, but it takes three novels before you can call yourself a novelist. The first two could have just been lucky. One day, I will finish my third, and one day, I will be a novelist.

I'm a professional writer and I consider it part of my job to publicise my work and these days part of that job is done online.

Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.