My interests are different now than they were thirty years ago.

The future is an ever-shifting maze of possibilities until it becomes the present

A world in which elves exist and magic works offers greater opportunities to digress and explore.

Why pretend to be something you're not? If you have to be someone, be someone no one else is.

Fear is a fire to temper courage and resolve. Use it so.

Lester del Rey told me repeatedly that the first and most important part of writing fiction is just to think about the story. Don't write anything down. Don't try to pull anything together right away. Just dream for a while and see what happens. There isn't any timetable involved, no measuring stick for how long it ought to take. For each book, it is different. But that period of thinking, of reflection, is crucial to how successful your story will turn out to be.

This is for writers yet to be published who think the uphill climb will never end. Keep believing. This is also for published writers grown jaded by the process. Remember how lucky you are.