Walter Jon Williams Quotes
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I wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember.
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I went to college, though I didn't take many writing courses.
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It's hard to generalize, because they're all different. When I started, I decided to take as much advantage as I could of the freedom offered by the SF field.
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Genre labels are useful only insofar as they help you find an audience.
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Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science.
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How long it takes to write a book depends on its length.
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I can't speak for the other authors, but what I hoped to achieve was to illuminate certain corners of the Lucas universe that hadn't yet been explored.
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Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.
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I found college useful for a lot of other reasons. It exposed me to a great many influences I wouldn't otherwise have encountered, and gave me a lot of time with some very intelligent people whose thoughts are still with me.
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I'm not afraid of werewolves or vampires or haunted hotels, I'm afraid of what real human beings to do other real human beings.
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I want a platform that, like a book or a magazine, I can carry into the bath or leave at the beach.
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The Internet offers an interesting combination of advertising and community by participating in the community you can become an advertisement for yourself.
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I've learned that I get blocked when my subconscious mind is telling me that I've taken the work in a wrong direction, and that once I start listening to what my subconscious is trying to tell me, I can work out the problem and get moving again.
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I'm in favor of any technology that makes my work available to the reading public at a reasonable price.
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Some of my ideas were shot down by Lucasfilm because they stepped on territory that has been reserved for the movies. I didn't have a problem with that.
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Working within the limitations of the shared world generally made the writing easier, because I didn't have to invent any of the characters or background, which is usually the hardest part.
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I was pretty much grown-up by the time I attended school in Britain - or as grown-up as I'll ever get.
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If you can find collaborators whose strengths compliment your own, the result can be more than the sum of its authors.
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Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can.
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That's why editors and publishers will never be obsolete: a reader wants someone with taste and authority to point them in the direction of the good stuff, and to keep the awful stuff away from their door.
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Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.
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It's a tough job to tell a story when the audience already knows the ending, and the ending is bleak.
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The Rift, which was well over a thousand pages of manuscript, took two years.
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For every SF reader of that period, Robert A. Heinlein was also a touchstone.