Words of Wisdom from Charlaine Harris

I spent last weekend at the California Crime Writers Conference, a biennial event that I highly recommend to anyone interested in researching, writing, pitching, and marketing any kind of writing.

One of our two keynote speakers was the delightful Charlaine Harris, author of a variety of cozy mystery series, including the Sookie Stackhouse series, which became the TV series True Blood.

As I said, Charlaine is delightful. She's Southern (which may be relevant), and full of charm. Also full of excellent one-liners. Rather than try to rephrase her talk, I'm simply going to transcribe the notes I took. I hope they provide you motivation for any of your creative efforts!

"I'm still so insecure about what I'm doing that I'm afraid to read a book on writing, because I'm afraid to learn I've been doing it wrong."

"What I know for sure:
1. This is hard work. It never gets easier, it just gets easier to see the hard spots coming up.
2. Writing is a business.
3. Not only your protagonist needs to be a three-dimensional character. They all do."

"Real writers don't want to give their plots away at parties." (TK's note: Mostly they don't want to be at parties talking to people.)

"That's as daredevil as I get: writing without an outline."

"Being a writer requires finishing a book ... so much for the creative process. Show up every day, finish a book."

"The best way to learn to write is by writing"

"Why do this job at all? Because ultimately, this is the best job in the world."