Top 146 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Stross - Page 3

I wanted an agent who would actually sell stuff. After two British agents failed comprehensively, I was reading Locus (the SF field's trade journal) and noticed a press release about an experienced editor leaving her job to join an agent in setting up a new agency. And I went "aha!" - because what you need is an agent who knows the industry but who doesn't have a huge list of famous clients whose needs will inevitably be put ahead of you. So I emailed her, and ... well, 11 years later I am the client listed at the top of her masthead!

I reckon I can count on 30 more writing years, averaging a book a year (I can't keep up the 2-2.5 a year I used to do these days). And these days I've gotten round to wondering, for each new idea, "do I want to be remembered for this?" before I get to the point of spending a year on it.

I don't do flash fiction.

The trouble is, if you go too far towards being polite, the label that applies is "doormat".

My favourite movie is: "Dr Strangelove". (I haven't seen any films released in the past 2-5 years, I'm afraid: I don't do TV/cinema).

Biggest influence: my mother.

I don't keep anything on paper (except within an actual novel in progress, at which point I need a file to keep track of plot threads, characters, and so on).

I don't think most of my opinions, political or social, are so far outside of the mainstream that they'd cause massive outrage on a scale liable to provoke death threats or referrals to prosecutors for outraging public decency, so why worry?

The one thing that does happen, every time, though, is that I never get to write a book until I've already been thinking about it for a period of months to years.

I have no policy, for or against: only a personal style. Which is to say, I use them when I think it's appropriate to; for example, an internal monologue by a locquacious and verbose narrator is more likely to be larded with adverbs than an exchange of instant messages between cops at a crime scene.

What I've learned during my life is that the near future is 90% identical to the present - if you buy a new car today, it'll probably still be on the road in 2022.

While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration.

When I do get to chow down on a book, I try to read ones that are nothing like what I'm writing. So, as I'm currently working on a space opera (of sorts) I'm mostly indulging in urban fantasy.

The dirty little secret of publishing is that, all along, each book sold has had an average of 5 readers. That's an 80% "piracy" rate if you insist on looking at it in those terms.

I don't want to permanently damage myself! On the other hand, a couple of days off the keyboard tends to make things somewhat better.

If I was a Marxist I'd call it the crisis of capitalism. Even though I'm not a Marxist, that seems like a not unreasonable term for the widening gap between the rich and poor that we're seeing.

If I wanted to be in movies, I'd have gone into scriptwriting: the fact that I write novels should be a big hint about what I prefer to do!

If an idea is compelling enough it'll stick in my head until I am forced to write it. If it's forgettable, who cares?

Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.

I do not click on random youtube videos.

If I write too much of anything for too long, I burn out on it. So it helps to vary my output from year to year.

Writing your own story around the same ideas is not plagiarism; at worst, it's being unoriginal.

Book depository is nothing new; there've been outlets selling books internationally via mail order for many decades - the only change is that it's now easier to find and use such services.

For a sampler, you could try my short story collection "Wireless". Which contains one novella that scooped a Locus award, and one that won a Hugo, and covers a range of different styles.

What I read: while I'm writing, I tend to go off reading fiction for relaxation - especially the challenging stuff. It's too much like the day job.

No two books come out the same way. Some I write by the seat of my pants; others are planned in minute detail.