Topiary has always seemed like a good occupation, comparable in some ways to writing short fiction. Kelly Link More Quotes by Kelly Link More Quotes From Kelly Link You get a lot of narrative energy from people who make really big mistakes, who act against their best interests, who do things that turn out to have serious consequences. It's very hard make a story out of people doing the right thing over and over again. Kelly Link narrative mistake people Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends. Kelly Link wizards ends knows You have to salvage what you can, even if you're the one who buried it in the first place. Kelly Link buried life firsts Look. All books are weird when you think about it.... It goes without saying that real life is also weird. Kelly Link real book thinking It's very unlikely that a writer is going to make a living by writing. So then the question is: how do you balance work, life, and writing? If you find out, please tell me. Kelly Link unlikely balance writing I don't think I'm cut out for a job where you have to look professionally tidy. I prefer working in my pajamas and taking showers after lunch. Kelly Link cutting jobs thinking Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl. Kelly Link girl reading stories So yes, this is a show about an adolescent girl, her friends, and various vampires. Vampires writing in diaries, vampires attending high school, vampires investigating various mysterious supernatural events, vampires tormenting each other, vampires eavesdropping on each other, and vampires being sarcastic about other vampires' hairstyles. Vampires embracing every possible opportunity to take off their shirts. Kelly Link girl sarcastic school Most of My Friends are two-thirds water Kelly Link thirds water two Life is a series of sudden disappearances, leave-takings without the proper goodbyes. Kelly Link series goodbye life Part of you is always traveling faster, always traveling ahead. Even when you are moving, it is never fast enough to satisfy that part of you. Kelly Link faster enough moving Sometimes it is safer to read maps with your feet. Kelly Link maps feet sometimes No wizard has ever made himself useful by magic, or, if they've tried, they've only made matters worse. No wizard ever stopped a war or mended a fence. It's better that they stay in their marshes, out of the way of worldly folk like farmers and soldiers and merchants and kings. Kelly Link soldier kings war We are sitting on our honeymoon bed in the honeymoon suite. We are in a state of honeymoon, in our honey month. These words are so sweet: honey, moon. This bed is so big, we could live on it. We have been happily marooned -- honey marooned -- on this bed for days. Kelly Link bed moon sweet Everyone has a bizarre childhood and unusual life experiences, whether they know it or not. There's no such thing as a normal childhood. What's useful in writing weird fiction is learning how to understand and articulate those moments of personal, particular strangeness. Kelly Link childhood normal writing I'm grateful when stories come in a rush, although I keep an eye on them afterwards, to see whether they hold together. It's harder to judge the ones that took so long to finish. With those, I've lost perspective. Mostly I'm just glad that I can be done with them. Kelly Link perspective grateful eye The initial spark usually has something to do with panic -- I'm due to turn in a story to a workshop or an editor. It's a terrible working method. Kelly Link sparks panic editors When you're Dead ... you stay up all night long. Kelly Link up-all-night night long I spend a lot of time loathing the sentences that I put down on the page. Once I'm past that phase, it doesn't really matter what the routine is (coffee shop, someone else's house, my dining room table), I'm pretty fast. I go back to the start of whatever I'm working on, every half hour or so, and revise my way back to where I left off. I have my headphones on, I'm checking email, I look at Twitter and Tumblr, and drink a lot of coffee. I need a lot of distraction to work. Kelly Link coffee house past I built a cannon out of ice, and wrapped myself in the funeral carpet which my husbands and wives had woven for me out of their own hair, and one of my wives was my gunner. I came back here, after many adventures, and once, when I'd been drinking, donated the funeral carpet to the national museum. When I was sober again, I asked for it back, but they claimed not to know what I was talking about. Kelly Link husband drinking adventure
