Questions to Ask an Author

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   What does your writing day actually look like?

   The shape of the day beats any statement about discipline: when they start, how long they last, what they do first, whether email comes before or after. Most writing days are shorter than readers assume, often two or three hours of real composition.

2. 2

   How many words is a good day, and how many is a bad one?

   Two numbers tell you far more than one. The spread shows whether they work to a quota or to a session, and it makes the arithmetic of a whole book visible to anyone considering writing one.

3. 3

   Where do you write, and does it matter?

   Some writers need one fixed room, others need a train, a cafe or background noise. The reason is usually practical rather than romantic: fewer interruptions, no internet, a chair that lets them stop noticing their own body.

4. 4

   Do you outline, or do you find out as you go?

   The split is real, and most writers sit somewhere in between with a method built by trial. Ask what the outline physically looks like, because answers range from thirty typed pages to four words on an index card.

5. 5

   What do you do when you sit down and nothing comes?

   Better than asking about writer's block, which invites a lecture. Practical answers are specific: rewriting yesterday's final paragraph, jumping to a later scene, walking with one question, or accepting a bad page to protect the habit.

6. 6

   How do you decide an idea is worth a year of your life?

   Books take years, so the selection test matters more than the supply of ideas. Writers often describe one: an idea that will not go away, a question they cannot answer, a structure they want to try out.

7. 7

   What is different about how you write now compared with ten years ago?

   Puts the change on the record instead of asking whether they have improved. Expect answers about cutting sooner, planning more, caring less about sentences early, or having lost the ability to start without knowing the destination.

8. 8

   Which of your books was hardest to sell?

   Publishing histories are rarely smooth. The book that struggled is often not the weakest, and the reasons, an editor who left, an awkward category, bad timing, are the parts of the industry that never reach the acknowledgements.

9. 9

   How did you get your agent, and how many said no first?

   Asking for the rejection count alongside the success prevents a tidy origin story. Most representation begins with a long run of no, and the specifics, where they submitted, what they changed, how long it took, are directly usable.

10. 10

    What do you wish someone had told you about publishing?

    Invites the practical grievance: how slowly money arrives, how little marketing is standard, how much of a launch falls to the author. This is the answer new writers most need and least often hear said plainly.

11. 11

    How much of your income comes from books?

    Most working writers hold a mix of advances, royalties, teaching, journalism, speaking and something unrelated. The proportions are more honest than any question about making a living, and they recalibrate what a published book actually pays.

12. 12

    What do you do with a review you think is unfair?

    The interesting answers describe a policy rather than a feeling: never reading reviews, reading them once, a standing rule about not responding. Ask what the rule is and whether they have ever broken it.

13. 13

    Who reads your work before anyone else, and what do you ask them for?

    First readers are chosen carefully, and what a writer asks of them is a craft question. Some want to know where attention dropped, some want line edits, some want only whether it works at all.

14. 14

    When you revise, what are you looking for on each pass?

    Revision is where most books are actually made, and experienced writers work in passes with a target for each: structure, then character, then continuity, then sentences. This gets a usable method rather than talk of polishing.

15. 15

    How do you write dialogue that does not sound written?

    The most asked-about technique, and the answers are concrete: reading aloud, cutting the first line of every exchange, letting people talk past each other, deleting the information you were trying to convey.

16. 16

    Which book taught you the most about writing, and what did you take from it?

    The second half forces specificity, so you get a technique instead of a reading list. Expect answers about structure, chapter length, how a point of view moves, or how much a writer can leave out and still be understood.

17. 17

    What have you abandoned, and how did you know to stop?

    The abandoned book is standard and almost never discussed. What made them stop, and how long it took to admit it, is more instructive to anyone writing than the story of a finished book ever is.

18. 18

    Do you reread your own work?

    A small question that gets an honest answer. Many writers cannot read a published book of theirs without editing it, some avoid them entirely, and a few go back to remember how they solved a particular problem.

19. 19

    What are you still bad at?

    Practising writers are precise about their weaknesses: plot, endings, physical description, comedy, writing children. A technical self-assessment is considerably more interesting than an account of what they do well.

20. 20

    What would you do differently if you were starting now?

    The industry has changed enough that the honest answer often contains advice they did not take themselves. Expect something about audience, publishing route, or years spent on the wrong project.