The most difficult novel I have had to write in terms of just getting it done was The Vampire Lestat. It took a year to write.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.
I think I wrote 'The Trysting Place' in about three weeks. But it was inexperience that made me have to do that. I didn't feel good about the book all the time I was writing it. It felt a bit like wading through molasses.
Getting to the point where I was ready to write a book has been about a 20-year journey of being, really honestly, too afraid to try - which I think is pretty common for people who are trying to write a large piece of fiction.
My first novel was a challenge to myself. No one had an inkling that I was working on it.
I don't know any writer for whom it comes easily. Maybe John Updike - a story would just seem to come to him whole, you know, out of a personal experience. But the rest of us, I think, are not so lucky, and I had to work hard, yeah.
You know, a vampire book is not a book to be the vehicle for big themes and stuff, where sometimes when you're dealing with art or the life of Christ or the oeuvre of Shakespeare, you know, it's a little more ambitious.
I knew I wanted to write novels, but I could not finish what I started. The closer I got, the more ways I'd find to screw it up.
The hardest thing in the world for a writer is to amass a readership. So many good books come out, and so many good books disappear.
The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children's books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted exactly the same but completely different. I'd much rather just do something completely different, even if there's a risk of it going wrong.
Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.