Author Gifts

"By God, for a minute there it suddenly all made sense!"

A dog sits at her typwriter

"This is definitely the last time for Chapter Seventeen!"

"I don't understand it - no matter how much I drink coffee, play on my phone, refresh my e-mail, look up things online, go to the kitchen for snacks, message my friends, scroll through Twitter, and play with the cats, I still can't get any writing done."

Novel, Novella, Novellette, Novellini

Writer with punctuation spray.

'I asked Will if he wrote it. He said he wasn't sure.'

1907: An unfortunate mis-print ruins Baden-Powell's first book launch.

"I translate books from English into better English."

"Do you mind if I interrupt your train of thought with my stream of consciousness?"

"Don't talk to me about suffering - in my spare time, I'm a writer."

Writers Strike

"Holy cow! What kind of crazy people used to live here anyway?"

"I write mostly confessional non-fiction."

"But I have a hard time calling this real writing."

"It doesn't matter how valuable the manuscript is to you, Charles."

The Emersons at Home

Melvyn Bragg.

Skywriter's Block

The original writers block

"It's plotted out. I just have to write it."

The First Writer and Editor: 'Take out that part?! Are you nuts? How is the stampede scene at the end of the cave going to make sense without it?!'

'126,000 words done...now I just need to work out what order to put them in.'

Shakespeare in the 21st century... 'To blog or not to blog, that is the question...'

'I started out in creative writing, began dabbling a bit in creative finance and accounting, and before I knew it, wound up here!'

"Sometimes it's important to stop whatever break you're taking and just do the work."

Public library - deep end, shallow end.

'It was a last-minute change, but a good one.'

"Writing is... rewriting."

Story Template

"I can't help thinking there's a book in this."

"We're still pretty far apart. I'm looking for a six-figure advance and they're refusing to read the manuscript."

Publisher to book writer holding up 'Get on Oprah' sign: 'So that's the extent of your marketing plan?'

"I have a lot of really good ideas, but I just can't get them down on paper."

"Chapter One: Call me Scooter..."