I love you," he whispered. "I hope you don't mind.

A Kiss," said Mogget sleepily. "Actually, just a breath would do. But you have to start kissing someone sometime, I suppose." "A breath?" she asked. She didn't want to kiss just any wooden man. He looked nice enough, but he might not be like his looks. A kiss seemed too forward.

For all my longer works (i.e. the novels) I write chapter outlines so I can have the pleasure of departing from them later on.

There were also very special or dangerous items that had to be fetched in person, or even by large parties of armed librarians.

I don't do all the background and the worldbuilding before I start the story. What I do is I work out the bare minimum I need to start the story, and often that really is a bare minimum - it's a character in a situation, and I know nothing about the character, I know nothing about the situation, and then I think about it for a long time, and make notes about where I think the story is going to go and so on, but I don't really make notes to do with the background or the magic system or the world.

Hear, hear," said the Dog, raising her head. "It's always better to be doing, Prince. Besides, you don't smell like a coward, so you can't be one.

Let this be my final lesson. Everyone and everything has a time to die.