John Sanford Likes the Smell of Stuffing

John Sanford, the Pulitzer-winning newspaper writer who's gone on to become a highly-successful novelist, likes a little stuffing. Not just during Thanksgiving, but with his female characters. "I want people to like them," he said. "I make them attractive, but always with slight weight problems. Make a female character struggle with being 10 pounds overweight and women identify with her."

When I saw John last year, he said he wrote his first novel while burnt out from the newspaper business. "I knew I was burnt out when I started trying to duck out of big assignments. Big news events became boring. I had to get out, so I turned to fiction."

John likes the smell stuffing, too. "A writer must create immediacy. You must involve all five senses. The most important is smell. You can make a character immediately loved or hated with smell. A bad smell makes a character unlikable immediately." He knows what he’s talking about; he's sniffed his way to several bestsellers.

To learn more about John Sanford, his uses for stuffing and his various smells, visit his website.

http://www.johnsandford.org/