Quotes by Walter Williams

• Genre labels are useful only insofar as they help you find an audience.
• I found college useful for a lot of other reasons. It exposed me to a great many influences I wouldn't otherwise have encountered, and gave me a lot of time with some very intelligent people whose thoughts are still with me.
• I can't speak for the other authors, but what I hoped to achieve was to illuminate certain corners of the Lucas universe that hadn't yet been explored.
• How long it takes to write a book depends on its length.
• For every SF reader of that period, Robert A. Heinlein was also a touchstone.
• Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.
• Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science.
• An SF author who reads only SF will have little new to contribute, but someone with a broader experience will bring more to the table.
• I wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember.
• Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.
• Now I have to motivate myself much more than I had previously.
• Working within the limitations of the shared world generally made the writing easier, because I didn't have to invent any of the characters or background, which is usually the hardest part.
• When state and religion are one, religion becomes a means for the powerful to remain in power.
• Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can.
• The Rift, which was well over a thousand pages of manuscript, took two years.
• The mass-market paperback, for one, is too expensive.
• The Internet offers an interesting combination of advertising and community by participating in the community you can become an advertisement for yourself.
• The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly.
• That's why editors and publishers will never be obsolete: a reader wants someone with taste and authority to point them in the direction of the good stuff, and to keep the awful stuff away from their door.
• I now have to find a reason to write, every single day.
• Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty, and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one.
• I want a platform that, like a book or a magazine, I can carry into the bath or leave at the beach.
• It's hard to generalize, because they're all different. When I started, I decided to take as much advantage as I could of the freedom offered by the SF field.
• It's a tough job to tell a story when the audience already knows the ending, and the ending is bleak.
• I've learned that I get blocked when my subconscious mind is telling me that I've taken the work in a wrong direction, and that once I start listening to what my subconscious is trying to tell me, I can work out the problem and get moving again.
• I'm not afraid of werewolves or vampires or haunted hotels, I'm afraid of what real human beings to do other real human beings.
• I'm in favor of any technology that makes my work available to the reading public at a reasonable price.
• I went to college, though I didn't take many writing courses.
• I was pretty much grown-up by the time I attended school in Britain - or as grown-up as I'll ever get.
• I've experienced writer's block, but never for more than a few days.
• Some of my ideas were shot down by Lucasfilm because they stepped on territory that has been reserved for the movies. I didn't have a problem with that.
• If you can find collaborators whose strengths compliment your own, the result can be more than the sum of its authors.