'The Exile' covers approximately the first third of 'Outlander'.
— Diana Gabaldon
Back in the day, when I was a university professor, I used to teach a class in Human Anatomy and Physiology. This class was popular with the football players, who all took it under the tragic misapprehension that it would be easy.
From the late '70s to the early '90s, I wrote anything anybody would pay me for. This ranged from articles on how to clean a longhorn cow's skull for living-room decoration to manuals on elementary math instruction on the Apple II... to a slew of software reviews and application articles done for the computer press.
Reading 'The Last Days of Magic' is like playing a well-constructed video game.
It's worth noting that at the time of the American Revolution, no sane person would have given two cents for its success.
Mid-afternoon, I'll go out and do the household errands, come home, do my gardening, go for an evening walk.
I have all the time and space in the world when I write a book.
If you're going to have more than one person read your book, they're going to have totally different opinions and responses. No person - no two people - read the same book.
The media is always looking for a story of one kind or another.
Actors act... Their job is to become this character. And I have, in fact, seen Sam Heughan become Jamie and Caitriona Balfe become Claire right before my eyes. It was an astonishing transformation.
I was writing 'Outlander' for practise and didn't want anyone to know I was doing it. So I couldn't very well announce to my husband that I was quitting my job and abandoning him with three small children to visit Scotland to do research for a novel that I hadn't told him I was writing.
I understand what it is that actors do. They embody someone that they aren't.
People have been trying to make a two-hour feature film of 'Outlander' for years and years and years.
I happened to see a really old 'Doctor Who', the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, and he'd picked up a Scotsman from 1745. It was an 18 or 19-year-old man who appeared in a kilt, and I thought, 'That's rather fetching.'
You are at some point exposed to a wonderful story, and you really want to know what happens next, so you learn to read in order to find out.
I cannot remember not being able to read.
I don't think I ever consciously separated 'school' books from any others; I just read anything that came across my path.
There's not a lot of pictorial evidence from the Highlands, because only the very wealthy had their portraits painted - but there is one well-known painting of the two sons of the Duke of Argyll, wearing tartan.
I particularly like the bookshops at National Parks and battlefields; they often have very unusual and helpful things.
Whenever anything bubbles up, I have to put it down. I have bits and pieces all over my hard drive.
I will literally read anything, regardless of genre, fiction or non-fiction, as long as it's well written.
It's important to remember that the Jacobite Risings of the 18th century constituted a religious civil war, not a nationalistic movement.
One of the great perks of being a writer is that you can work when you're mentally capable of it, not when someone else thinks you should.
When I am at home writing, I have all the power. I am God. But TV is a polytheistic universe.
I read some books, and I thought, 'This is better than sliced bread!' and a month later, I couldn't remember thinking about it. And I've read others that were kind of a slog, and I've put them down and come back six months later thinking, 'Wow, this is great.' So, you know, things change all the time.
All I had when I began writing the first book was rather vague images conjured up by the notion of a man in a kilt, so essentially I began with Jamie, although I had no idea what his name was at the time.
If you're writing something that's clearly labelled as an alternative history, of course it's perfectly legitimate to play with known historical characters and events, but less so when you're writing an essentially straight historical fiction.
When you're an artist, you can't write with the intent of affecting anyone.
I'm not a team player. I'm used to having total control over everything I do.
Each book develops a strong organic shape. And when that shape is complete, the book is complete. I don't know where the end is. I don't start at the beginning. It's like playing Tetris in my head in a very slow kind of way. All the shapes join up.
When I turned 35, I thought, 'Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I'm going to start writing a book on my next birthday.' I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up.
My mom would keep all kinds of materials in her classroom for children for reading. She kept comic books, newspapers, sports magazines, and books of all kinds.
Oh, 'Pandaemonium', by Chris Brookmyre! Just fabulous - such a layered, beautifully structured, engaging, intelligent book. I love all Chris's stuff, but this was remarkable.
I do recall loving 'All Quiet on the Western Front,' and I know I read it in a schoolroom, but I think I was in the sixth grade at the time, so it probably wasn't assigned reading.
The Internet has improved a lot in the last few years, but still, you wouldn't want to depend on Web sources for historical analysis. There's just something hard to beat about a book.
Part of my purpose in my books has been to tell the complete story of a relationship and a marriage, not just to end with 'happily ever after,' leaving the protagonists at the altar or in bed... I wanted to show some of the complicated business of actually living a successful marriage.
Now I've got a fairly good grasp of the 18th century on what was common and what people thought. But I don't write in order. I write bits and pieces and sort of glue them.
Three of the principal cast members of 'Outlander' have come out publically for 'Yes': Sam Heughan, Graham MacTavish and Grant O'Rourke. And the 'Yes' proponents are on fire: idealistic, hopeful, inspired by the idea of change and of democratic self-determination.
For months, people have been asking my views about the Scottish independence referendum, and I've been saying, 'It's not my country; I don't live here. Much as I love Scotland, I think it would be inappropriate to express a personal opinion regarding Scottish politics'.
I stagger out of bed, take the dogs outside, and then I'll get a Diet Coke and a couple of dog biscuits and go upstairs. By the time I've consumed my Diet Coke and had a quick run through the morning email and Twitter feed, I will probably be compos mentis enough to work.
I have friends who are writers who have had movies made of their books, and they are almost uniformly horrified about what's been done - or, at least, dissatisfied.
You won't have a story unless you have conflict, which means if there's no conflict in a situation, people look for a way to make some.
I've never been willing to commit to more than one at a time, because I just don't know - I don't plan the books out ahead of time. So I have no idea how much ground we'll cover.
I began writing 'Outlander' in 1988, so the Internet as we now know it didn't exist.
I'm a really slow writer. What I need to start writing on any given day, is a kernel, a line of dialogue, anything I can sense concretely.
While you certainly will recognize 'Outlander' if you've been reading the books, there's also this wonderful sense of novelty and discovery about it because of all the little new touches and twists. I watch it in utter fascination waiting to see what will happen.
I think characters are going to be, if not a reflection of the author, at least some refraction of some part of their personality.
Where I live, there is a group of fans who take me out to tea every year to pick my brains about what's coming up.
I think it's extremely important that children are exposed to reading.
I've read a lot of classic literature from assorted cultures, and always glad to read more when one comes across my path - but why be embarrassed by the fact that flesh and blood has limits? Nobody's read everything.
