Zevin on what can help make a good writer

Oh, John Scalzi's blog, where you can hear writers talk about writing and their books from all sorts of angles.  I read Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin when I got the amazing chance to help a professor prep for a class.  The world was odd, and the characters were sympathetic even when they were making really bad choices.  There were lots of important issues pondered sideways.  It was great.  So when Mr. Scalzi's blog had a post from her in his Big Idea segment, I knew it would be great, too.  It was.  She wrote:

"And you ought to read some current events every now and again. And you ought to read books that aren’t necessarily the kind of things you like. (Because it turns out that literature occasionally aspires to a goal other than to make you like it.) And, if you really, really want to write a book, you’ll probably need to discover an aptitude for being alone and you might even have to get off the Internet a couple of hours a day. FACT: Books take slightly longer than tweets to write." 

and

"I have to love a concept enough to want to write it, but love is not enough. The fear is what keeps me engaged at two in the morning."

Check out the whole post and maybe even her wild new book set in a world you have to read about to believe . . .