"Sometimes I wake up at 3 in the morning," Barbara Howar voiced, "and think, 'Oh, God! Why did you have to tell somebody exactly what you thought? I mean, who asked for your opinion?'" In 1973, Barbara wrote 'Laughing All the Way' about Washington D.C. society which ended up being the number one best-seller for some 26 weeks. Writing, Barbara believed, "With fiction you have to create characters, give them motivation, make them act, speak, connect so many things on various levels, and it all comes out of your imagination." The age of her heroine in the 1976 book 'Making Ends Meet' was 40 because "there's something about that age – look, half my life is back there somewhere – when you stop to assess where you are going, what life has meant, to come to terms with what you want, what your priorities are." In 'Making Ends Meet', "...Some things are different. I gave (the heroine) money. If she hadn't had money she would have been bogged down for 369 pages just keeping the wolf from the door. And I didn't give her female friends. If she had had the good kinds of female companionship I'm fortunate enough to have she'd have had no problems to think out for herself and I'd have had no book."
Margaret Truman maintained, "It's much easier to write fiction. All you have to do is research and get the facts straight and put it together...I find writing very difficult, any kind of writing." Noel Gerson reasoned, "To avoid writer's block I always write a fiction and non-fiction book at one time." Helen Van Slyke added, "Once I'm into a book I get so interested that it seems to write itself. The dialog is easy. You see that character; you can hear that character. I never outline a book and sometimes the characters take over and surprise me." However Helen cautioned, referring to the books 'The Mixed Blessing' and 'The Heart Listens', "I changed a few situations and dropped a few characters and the letters came pouring in 'What do you mean by saying so and so had never met so and so? They met on page 62 in the first book'. When 'The Mixed Blessing' came out in paperback I corrected the discrepancies to satisfy all those people."
The success of her books, Helen offered, "There is a very big hole in the fiction business...Novels have gotten away from the absorbing story with a plot, a beginning, a middle and an end. Most novels are far out, about situations many people can't connect with. Mine are about real people with whom the reader can identify – the same element that makes soap operas successful."
Zelda Popkin revealed about 'Dear Once', "The first draft contains the basic bones; the storyline and all the characters are there. While doing that I make notes for the 2nd draft. The 2nd is a very fat one – every step is built up, the dialog expanded. The 3rd draft is for style and polish, incorporating the editor's suggestions. The great moment for me is when the characters start talking to me and I'm catching the nuances of their speech and their attitudes. They just come alive, and they live in my house and I live with them and I’m involved. I really miss them when I’m finished."
Sidney Sheldon said, "There are 40,000 books fiction and non-fiction published in (the United States) every year (in the '70s). That's 800 new books a week, more than 100 a day. And only a half dozen of them become runaway best-sellers. Hype can hurt. Books are sold by word of mouth. If hype sells a bad book for a day or 2, word of mouth soon gets out and it's all over."
By 1970, some 150 colleges across America began teaching science fiction writing. The Science Fiction Writers of America expressed, "The tendency has been to look at science fiction as something separate from other forms of literature, but now this is changing. We are writing for bright people and the best writers always have. The work is aimed not necessarily at the scientifically sophisticated but at the intelligent everywhere." Jerry Pournelle concurred, "Science fiction is a never-never land, except that if you pay attention to what's going on, you see how much of the never-never land is true."
Speaking at a Public Library's Literary Lunch Box, Noel emphasized, "There is really no way to tell what influences the ups and downs of a particular type of book. Possibly sociological factors or economic factors cause trends. In the late 1950s the popularity of the serious historical novel began to lessen. By the late '60s the public did not want any part of it, but I think it is again on the upward swing of the pendulum (in the '70s). I don't know the answer to what causes these trends, but when times are tight I think more people turn to reading as a form of entertainment." Julie Ellis shared, "Publishers want a certain name for a certain category of book. It's upsetting to a reader who expects a Gothic to find it's a mystery...Paperbacks for writers of the '50s and '60s were a way to acquire facility, they've been our training ground, as pulps were in the '30s and '40s for an earlier generation of writers." Noel insisted, "Few books are written on subjects that interest the author. The only book that I wrote about a topic that I thought interested me and would interest my readers was one about professional football. That worked, but it was the exception and not the rule."
Walter B. Gibson stated in 1978, "So far in my life, I've written about 29 million words...I was asked to deliver 24 stories at 60,000 words each. I did it in 10 months and then wrote 4 extra novels for a total of 1,680,000 words. That was my record run...I had only one writing trick. I would never stop writing a day's work with a completed sentence, but would leave off in the middle. Then when I came back to my typewriter, I didn't have to worry about where to start. I'd pick up the unfinished sentence and be off and running." John Jay Osborn Jr. believed, "Teaching is ideal for writing. It gives you the time to both write and teach. They go together beautifully."
Michael Avallone made known, "When I was a kid I wanted to be a G-man, an actor, a spy, a World War II aviator – all the heroic things. That's what Gary Cooper did to me in the movies where he fought for idealism and principle. Through writing, I can do all that. It's a coalesce and a concatenation of all that – of everything. I would rather write than eat or sleep." Wright Morris argued writing "is an organic activity. It literaly is a form of living. If I failed to function as a writer, I would be in a most miserable way. I think I would just wither away like a plant. So, you see, I have to write."
In 1980, Wright wrote 'Plains Song'. He put into words, "This book was 45 years in the making. It summarizes a lifetime of work. Its leading personalities are women, and I think women are very close to the heart of all my fiction. Whenever there is a portrait of a woman in a book of mine it is apt to be central. I think it is a test of the fiction writer to be able to write these portraits and make them believable. I feel there is more release for a writer to write about the non-known side of his personality...The authentic, imaginative writer has his greatest successes in freeing himself of the overfamiliar, I find, and I suppose this is curious that when I have finished writing about a woman I know more about her than I did before."
