A Quote by Judy Blume

I was twenty-seven when I began to write seriously, and after two years of rejections, my first book, 'The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo,' was accepted for publication.
I didn't write professionally at first. It took me nine years to get anything published. At the beginning I mostly wrote picture books, which were rejected by every children's book publisher in America. The first book of mine to be accepted for publication was ELLA ENCHANTED, and not one but two publishers wanted it. That day, April 17, 1996, was one of the happiest in my life.
The success [of the X-Men], I think, is for two reasons. The first is that, creatively, the book was close to perfect ... but the other reason is that it was a book about being different in a culture where, for the first time in the West, being different wasn't just accepted, but was also fashionable. I don't think it's a coincidence that gay rights, black rights, the empowerment of women and political correctness all happened over those twenty years and a book about outsiders trying to be accepted was almost the poster-boy for this era in American culture.
For twenty years I read a book a day, from the time I was seven until I was twenty-seven.
While writing, I'm always so happy in the middle of a book or finishing a book and really hate starting them, so I often think, 'I wish I had a really big book to write to which I could devote seven years of my life.'
I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.
Keep reading and writing, learn how to revise, and push through rejections. My second book, Monsoon Summer, was rejected over 20 times and finally came out 11 years after my first book! I'm glad I didn't give up. Neither should you.
In 2011, I did an internship in Seven Dials, a junction in London where seven roads come together. I'd given up on writing after multiple rejections for my first novel, and I was starting to consider a career in publishing instead, but Seven Dials gave me such a strong idea for a setting that I couldn't resist picking up my pen again.
The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio.
I was a writer first, and knew I'd be a storyteller at age seven. But since my parents are very practical, they urged me to go into a profession that would be far more secure so I went to medical school. But after practicing medicine for a few years, while raising two sons (with a husband who was also a doctor) I realized that combining medicine with motherhood was more of a challenge than I could handle. So I left medicine and stayed home. And that's when I once again picked up the pen and began to write.
Spotify appeared nine years after Napster, the pioneering file-sharing service, which unleashed piracy on the record business and began the cataclysm that caused worldwide revenues to decline from a peak of twenty-seven billion dollars in 1999 to fifteen billion in 2013.
I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn't realized it (the original book) had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.
As for my writing process, there is one truth I have discovered after writing some twenty-plus books: Not every book is the same, but the middle of every book is where I really begin to question my choice of vocations. The beginning and end is usually fairly clear to me, but that middle just sucks the life right out of me.
This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.
Now, everybody knows the basic erogenous zones. You got one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. ... OK, now most guys will hit one, two, three and then go to seven and set up camp. ... You want to hit 'em all and you wanna mix 'em up. You gotta keep 'em on their toes. ... You could start out with a little one. A two. A one, two, three. A three. A five. A four. A three, two. Two. A two, four, six. Two, four, six. Four. Two. Two. Four, seven! Five, seven! Six, seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven! [holds up seven fingers]
An erratum is a correction inserted into a book after publication. It's a nice thing to collect because you can't go after them, you just come upon them. In 25 years I've only found about 12.
I love to read. I remember hearing that the average author takes two years to write a book. So when I read a book, I feel like I am getting two years of life experiences.
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