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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.”

Writing Hours Novel Week

Author:Dean Koontz

“Fiction -- at least for me -- requires long, relatively uninterrupted time stretches in which to bring it to fruition. I've never been a two-hour-in-the-morning writer, who could put in another six hours on Sunday afternoon. For me, a novel requires weeks of living in a largely mental and wholly internal landscape. Everything else has to be relegated to the odd hour here, the bit of time there. Sadly, however, uninterrupted time blocks are not what life doles out today to any of us with regularity.”

Long Two Today Bits Hours Fiction Morning Novel Week Six Block Landscape Odd Internals Sunday Afternoon Regularity Fruition Sunday Afternoons

Book:Conversations with Samuel R. Delany

Source: Conversations with Samuel R. Delany

“Never, if you can possibly help it, write a novel. It is, in the first place, a thoroughly unsocial act. It makes one obnoxious to one's family and to one's friends. One sits about for many weeks, months, even years, in the worst cases, in a state of stupefaction.”

Ifs Writing Years Firsts States Helping Cases Novel Week Worst Months Obnoxious

Author:Pearl S. Buck

“Anyone could write a novel given six weeks, pen paper, and no telephone or wife.”

Writing Given Novel Wife Week Paper Six Pens Telephones

Author:Evelyn Waugh

“A year after I'd graduated college, I went to a weeklong conference intensive in Boston, and that's when things kicked into high gear. My workshop leader was a Harvard professor and editor. At the end of the week we met one-on-one over breakfast, and she said, in essence, "Look, you're ready to turn pro." She gave me a list of literary agents to query once I had something to show them. I came home and wrote my first real novel, and the agent that sold it to Tor Books was on that list.”

“With a song, it only takes a couple of minutes to go back to the beginning and try it again to see if it works. The novel freaks me out because, what if you get into the eighth chapter and think, 'Let's go to the top and see if this works again? It's going to take me three weeks.' I'm in awe of that.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Trying Song Three Novel Week Minutes Couple Awe What If Songwriting Take Me Freak Chapters

Author:Ben Folds

“I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.”

Writing Trying Hands Next Novel Pieces Week Youth One Day Memoir Evolve Sat Nonfiction

Author:Tim O'Brien

“To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.”

Ifs Kind Two Certain Reading Novel Focus Week Devotion Concentration Two Weeks

Author:Philip Roth

“The thing I like so much about short stories is that there isn't as much of an investment of time so I'm free to experiment more. If it doesn't work out, I've only lost a week or two of work. If I screw up a novel I've lost at least a year's worth of work. But the nice thing is that those experiments with short stories can be carried over to novels when the experiments do work.”

Ifs Years Two Stories Lost Novel Nice Week Investment Work Out Experiments Short Story Screws Nice Things Screw Ups

Author:Charles de Lint

“Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead.”

Writing Romance Courses Novel Week Decided Great American

Author:Jasmine Cresswell

“When you're depressed, you know, it's like the world has ended. Even getting out of bed takes the most massive amount of effort. But when you're manic, oh, it's so addicting. You know, I have finished novels in two weeks in manic stages.”

Knows World Two Effort Novel Week Stage Amount Bed Finished Massive Two Weeks Manic

Author:Sherman Alexie

“The hardest thing in a novel is time. You've got [a line like] "two weeks later, he woke up with a headache," and you've got to add up that entire two weeks and what the date is and whether it works. That kind of stuff drives me crazy and if I don't have it exactly right, I can't move forward because I don't feel confident.”

Ifs Feels Kind I Can Two Moving Stuff Lines Novel Week Crazy Add Hardest Moving Forward Hardest Thing Two Weeks Headache Drive Me Crazy

Author:T.C. Boyle

“I try not to write more than two or three, I try to just write one if possible, I write till the end at least a draft of a play or a novel; but sometimes, I'll take a break for a couple weeks for a project that is paying me money like a television project which I try to stay away from just to stay financially ahead of the game.”

Ifs Writing Trying Two Ends Sometimes Play Three Games Break Novel Week Television Couple Projects Till The End Ahead Of The Game

Author:Adam Rapp