Author Birthday – 31 October – Don Winslow

Happy Birthday, Don Winslow, born on 31 October 1953.

Don Winslow Quotes

1. I think you can talk about writing or you can write, but it’s pretty hard to do both. At least for me.
2. I’d heard Joseph Wambaugh say that when he was starting, he decided to write ten pages a day, no matter what. I didn’t think I could do ten, but I could do five. So I wrote five pages a day on my first crime novel, no matter where I was or what I was doing. After a while (okay, quite a while) I had a book. The first 14 publishers I sent it to disagreed. The 15th thought it was a book (it was nominated for an Edgar) and I’ve been writing since.
3. If I’m at home in California, I write in my office. If we’re in Rhode Island, I write on my mother’s porch.
4. The ‘when’ is pretty much the same – I start work at 5 or 5:30 AM depending on the time of year (earlier in the summer) and work all day. In winter, I take a break around 10 and do a few miles. In summer, I knock off late afternoon and hit the waves until dark. It’s a good life.
5. My hunch is that writer’s block is really an attempt to write perfectly on the first draft, which is hard to do. I just write badly until the good stuff comes.
6. Write. That sounds glib, and I don’t mean it to. But at the end of the day, it comes down to sitting – usually alone – in front of some kind of writing instrument and getting it down.
7. Everything we do informs our writing. That’s what makes us writers. Everyday observations and experiences become grist for the mill.
8. In crime writing, there are the events, but then there are the underlying reasons for what has happened. Providing that richness is what I hope to give the reader.
9. I treat writing like a job. I don’t really believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs.
10. I think story dictates style. I try to write from inside the character’s head. It’s kind of sneaky: it’s third person but it has a first-person point of view.
11. When I began writing in the present tense, the story suddenly had a sense of immediacy it never before had.
12. Read good books. I just finished War and Peace for the fifth time in my life. I wanted to see how a great writer handles a multi-generational story. So, one has to read good things.

Source for quotes 1-6 : Advice To Writers and 7-12: HuffPost

Don Winslow is a bestselling American author of thrillers, spy novels, and crime fiction. Winslow’s first novel, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, was nominated for an Edgar Award and a Shamus Award for Best First Novel. He has written more than 40 acclaimed, award-winning international bestsellers, including eight New York Times bestsellers (Savages, The Kings of Cool, The Cartel, The Force, The Border, City on Fire, City of Dreams, and City in Ruins). In addition to his novels, Winslow has published numerous short stories in anthologies and magazines such as Esquire, the Los Angeles Times Magazine and Playboy. His columns have appeared in the Vanity Fair, Vulture, Huffington Post, CNN Online, and other outlets. Winslow is the recipient of the Raymond Chandler Award, the LA Times Book Prize, the Ian Fleming Silver Dagger, The RBA Literary Prize, and many other prestigious awards. He is a former investigator, anti-terrorist trainer, and trial consultant. In January, 2026, Winslow published The Final Score featuring six crime novellas. Follow him on Instagram @donwinslowfilms and Facebook @DonWinslowAuthor and X @donwinslow.

Source for photograph: Author’s Website

by Amanda Patterson
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