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With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.

Emma Donoghue

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Emma Donoghue
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Book
Worse
First
Seven
Drafts
Writing
Getting
Hired
Made
Less
Draft
Never
Write
Confident
Film
Script
Young
Scripts
Firsts
Eight

More quotes by Emma Donoghue

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I hate desks they make me feel like a child doing homework.
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Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case, a tiny little bit of fact just seems to work.
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When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything
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I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga.
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I think I read Susan Brownmiller's classic book called Femininity when I was about 16. So yeah, it's been part of my mindset since a very early age. To me, what's crucial is to tell women's stories but also to tell them in a way that is fearless.
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...real loneliness is having no one to miss. Think yourself lucky you've known something worth missing.
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She leaped into space, high, higher than she'd ever been in her life. She came down with a clean snap, and the crowd scattered like birds from the swing of her feet.
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Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.
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Everyone's got a different story.
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I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was.
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Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it.
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Seriously, I think what all the puzzling over parenthood I had to do to write [a novel] ROOM taught me is that children can thrive in a remarkable range of situations.
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Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.
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Writing stories is my way of scratching that itch: my escape from the claustrophobia of individuality. It lets me, at least for a while, live more than one life, walk more than one path. Reading, of course, can do the same.
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Kissing a witch is a perilous business. Everybody knows it's ten times as dangerous as letting her touch your hand, or cut your hair, or steal your shoes. What simpler way is there than a kiss to give power a way into your heart?
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I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless.
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The sound of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.
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Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up.
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Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.
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Goodbye, Room. I wave up at Skylight. Say goodbye, I tell Ma. Goodbye, Room. Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.
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