Talent or craftsmanship—how do you think about writing? In your opinion, what is it authors need to especially excel in to captivate their audience?
I talk about things like this a lot in the podcast I do with Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler. I think talent makes some contribution, but it’s overshadowed by practice. If you go back and look at the first unpublished novels that I wrote, they’re terrible and derivative. I didn’t have any practice then, but I had just as much talent as I have now. Writing well is something I have learned, and it’s something I’m still learning. I think having characters who readers can care about is what will make a novel stand or fall.
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