Ask the Author: Bryan Gruley
Answered Questions (4)
Bryan Gruley
I have a saying attributed to oJack London taped to my laptop: "You can't wait around for inspiration. You have to hunt it down with a club." In other words, you have to do the work. So I write.
Bryan Gruley
The first rule of writing: Ass in chair. Write. Write for 5 minutes a day if that's all the time you have, but do it every day. Next thing you know, it'll be 10 minutes, then 20, and the words will start to pile up. Words will not write themselves.
Bryan Gruley
Short answer: sit down and write. If it's crap--sometimes it is--I can fix it later. I also think of my pal Marcus Sakey's answer to someone who asked him about writer's block: "Plumbers can't get blocked." In other words, writing is your job. You just gotta do it.
Bryan Gruley
The central event that spurs the rest of the book was inspired by the murder of the Robison family in their northern Michigan cottage in the late 1960s. I was a kid who read about it in The Detroit News. Not long after, my parents bought a cottage not far too far from where the Robisons were killed. I would like awake at night terrified that someone would come in and kill us all.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more