Novels Are Written Word By Word

I kind of build a novel the way marine polyps build a coral reef; it's millions and millions of little precarious bodies stacked on one another.

Dean Koontz 

Writers, Before They Were Authors, Were Avid Readers

What I want to do is reproduce the primacy of the reading art that was so precious to me  when I was younger, when I was discovering my own excitement about books.

Jonathan Lethem 

The Future of Investigative Journalism

Investigative reporting in America did not begin with Watergate. But it became entrenched in American journalism--and has been spreading around the world--largely because of Watergate.

     Now, 40 years after Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote their first stories about the break-in at the Democratic Committee headquarters in Washington's Watergate office building, the future of investigative reporting is at risk in the chaotic digital reconstruction of journalism in the United States. Resource-intensive investigative reporting has become a burden for shrunken newspapers struggling to reinvent themselves and survive. Nonprofit start-ups seeking to fill the gap are financially fragile themselves, with their sustainability uncertain.

Leonard Downie Jr.

Internet Journalism

The question is not whether Internet journalism will be dominant, but whether it will maintain the quality of the best print journalism. In the end it is not the delivery system that counts. It is what it delivers. There has never been such access to knowledge in all its forms. What we have to find is a way to sustain truth seeking. If we evolve the right financial model, we will enter a golden age of journalism.

Harold Evans

Great Characters in Literature Would Not Be Great People in Real Life

Something that makes a really great literary character would often make a horrible roommate, or friend, or boyfriend. And that's why they're so much fun to read about and it's so great that they don't exist.

Mallory Ortberg

Writing Is Rewriting

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.

Robert Cormier

Joseph Heller's Work Habits

I work almost constantly. For a novelist without hobbies, weekends don't make much difference. Most people don't enjoy weekends anyway, they don't know what to do with Sundays.

Joseph Heller 

The World of Publishing

The world of publishing is a potentially hostile environment, especially for the writer.

Jeff Herman