Literary Birthday – 12 March – Carl Hiaasen

Happy Birthday, Carl Hiaasen, born on 12 March 1953. 

Carl Hiaasen Quotes

1. There is no writer’s block in a newsroom. There’s only unemployment block.
2. All novels are about crime. You’d be hard pressed to find any novel that does not have an element of crime. I don’t see myself as a crime novelist, but there are crimes in my books. That’s the nature of storytelling, if you want to reflect the real world.
3. Everybody’s idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it’s one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original.
4. In a place as wild as South Florida, true-life events are almost too big and too weird to be dealt with appropriately in a newspaper. The journalism feeds the imagination, which feeds the fiction. As for keeping a schedule, it’s pretty simple: Two days a week I write for The Miami Herald, and the rest of the time I’m working on novels or magazine articles. Or fishing.
5. You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don’t get past the third paragraph you’ve wasted your energy and valuable ink.
6. My humour has always come from anger, but I have to make sure I don’t just get angry and jump on a soapbox.
7. I never laugh or smile when I am writing. When I come home for lunch after writing all morning, my wife says I look like I just came home from a funeral. This is not bragging. This is an illness.
8. My books are character-driven. They’re not driven by the story.
9. Lots of people can write a good first page but to sustain it, that’s my litmus test. If I flip to the middle of the book and there’s a piece of dialogue that’s just outstanding, or a description, then I’ll flip back to the first page and start it.
10. The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.

Must-read: Carl Hiaasen On Writing

Carl Hiaasen is an American author who often writes in the hardboiled fiction style. His works of fiction include Star Island, Nature Girl, Tourist Season, Hoot, and Skinny Dip. His latest novel for adults is Fever Beach. He is also the author of several popular novels for young readers, including Hoot, which won a Newbery Honor, and, Skink – No Surrender, which introduces one of the wildest characters in his adult books to a teen audience. His latest novel for YAs is Wrecker. He wrote a column, and was an investigative journalist, for The Miami Herald until he retired in 2021. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica: ‘Hiaasen has written or co-written more than 30 books—including satirical mystery novels and nonfiction books—many of which explore what he calls the ‘weirdness’ of his home state. He has three Pulitzer Prize-nominations for his non-fiction work.’ Follow him on Instagram.

Source for quotes
Source for image: Elena Seibert

by Amanda Patterson
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