Literary Birthday - 5 March - Robin Hobb Happy Birthday, Robin Hobb, born 5 March 1952 Seven Writing Quotes I do rough out an outline of each story, but as I write I find that things change. Characters don’t react as I expect them to, events don’t move as swiftly, or what seemed likely now seems contrived. If at any time a different plot path seems more likely, I allow myself to follow it. So far, I have not regretted it. Oddly enough, books often end just as I expected them to, after taking a very round about path to reach the conclusion. I’m a writer. I’m neither an editor nor a publisher. In other words, I cannot truly advise you how to fix something to make it publishable, nor can I offer to publish and buy it. The first thing you have to do is write. There is no easy shortcut about that. Having a great agent or your cousin being best friends with an editor won’t change that. First, you have to write the book (or story) beginning to end. Then you have to make it the best story you can possibly create. The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don’t listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won’t be one of them. Don’t listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don’t have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them. I meet far too many people who are going to be writers ‘someday.’ When they are out of high school, when they’ve finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire … That is such a trap You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That’s okay. I think we’ve all ‘been there, done that.’ It all starts with the writing. I’ve always preferred to work alone, not sharing my work with anyone until it goes off to an editor. That’s my quirk. Many professionals attribute a lot of their success to workshops and writers’ clubs. It isn’t that uncommon in the writing world to have more than one pseudonym, especially if you write in more than one genre. In my case, Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb both write fantasy, but in very different styles and in different ‘slices’ of the genre. By using two different pseudonyms, I am able to let the reader know which voice they are getting in a book. Some readers like both styles. Others most emphatically do not. Robin Hobb is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction. She is the author of The Farseer Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, and the Tawny Man Trilogy. She also writes as Megan Lindholm, and her works under that name have been finalists for the Hugo award, the Nebula Award, and the Endeavor award. She has won an Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Readers’ Award twice writers-write-creative-blog.posthaven/literary-birthday-5-march-robin-hobb
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 06:50:55 +0000
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