Susanna Clarke Wrote a Hit Novel Set in a Magical Realm. Then She Disappeared. - The New York Times
Trying to provoke, rather than prescribe, is her approach. “I don’t want the writer to write what I want — I want the writer to write something that I didn’t know I needed. And that’s been the rule for me throughout my working life, to do with the thing that’s almost impossible to articulate, which is about a feeling, about a chill, about a goosebu... See more
She May Be the Most Powerful Producer Working in Theater
“Sequels can be very enticing when the initial book has done well. Readers want to know what happens to a character they’ve connected with.” “But they’re never as good as the first book, are they?” Matilda seemed to give this real consideration. “I’m sure some are. Or at least … as good.” There was a pause as each of them tried to come up with an e
... See moreJean Hanff Korelitz • The Sequel: The follow up to the New York Times Bestselling The Plot: 'Insanely readable.' Stephen King
and that direction is towards the reinclusion of fantasy as an essential element of fiction. Or put it this way: fiction—writing it, reading it—is an act of the imagination.
Ursula K. Le Guin • Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books
This is what I call a Distributary World – it was created by ideas flowing out of another world. This world could not have existed unless that other world had existed first.
Susanna Clarke • Piranesi
I went through a William Blake phase as a graduate student, and I like to think that my writing at least makes gestures to—well, beauty is such a big word—a grace that is not just academic, a gracefulness that is not just academic.
Helen Sword • Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write
On finding your second wind:
“Sooner or later, however, a writer (or at least a writer of my type) finds himself at a crossroads: he has exhausted his initial experience of the world and the ways of expressing it and he must decide how to proceed from there.
He can, of course, seek ever more brilliant ways of saying the things he has already sa
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