'It's all in your own mind'

 

“Every reader re-creates a novel - in their own imagination, anyway. It's only entirely the writer's when nobody else has read it.”  – Susan Hill

Hill, born on this date in 1942, is an English author of “mostly ghost stories written in gothic style to create maximum suspense and the right atmosphere." Among her works are The Woman in Black, The Mist in the Mirror, and I'm the King of the Castle, for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award – named for British writer W. Somerset Maugham and a really cool award that can only be used for foreign travel to do more research for your writing. 

An only child she said she was born to be a writer.  “I was never really good at anything else,” she explained.  “I had no other option.  I could write; I wanted to write; I wrote.  Otherwise, I was unemployable.” 

 

  In addition to the "Maugham" award, Hill was named by Queen Elizabeth as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2012 and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2020 for her lifetime achievement and services to literature.     

 

“Don’t overwrite," Hill says about the writing process that has led to her own success.  "Once you finish a book, just let it go out into the world to seek its fortune.”