With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing.
After starting as a journalist for newspapers and magazines, I began to write books and had success with a novel and four nonfiction books for young adults.
I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.
I worked in publishing before I became an author, so I knew how a book gets made.
I write books to find out about things.
As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an understanding, then I begin the detective work reading old books, old letters, old newspapers, and visiting the places where my subject lived. Often I turn up surprises, and of course, I pass them on.
I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!
I guess there's a sort of cycle with writing books. There's all the researching and then the imagining and writing - which is the real job - and then there's always a period when the book comes out and you have to lift your head and venture out.
Readers really want to come back to an author; they do not want a one-book wonder. That is all very well, but to be career author, you have to be prepared to write one really good book and then write another really good book and keep feeding your readers. You build your audience over a long time.
There's something nice and intimate about having a book. You know that someone's actually gone on this journey. You know that someone has actually researched and reported all these things. You can see and hear their tone in what they chosen to include and what they haven't.
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