If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Most novels, I find, are three times longer than they need to be. Very little happens, and I don't want to waste my time with them.
A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.
Typically, a book takes me about a year to write.
Usually, I would mistrust a book if it took that long to write. Usually, if it isn't done in two years, I suspect there's something wrong and throw it away.
Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.
There comes a point when you're writing a novel when you're in it so deep that the life of the novel becomes more real to you than life itself. You have to write your way out of it; once you're there, it's too late to abandon.
I don't write a novel every two years.
I always tell my students, 'If you walk around with your eyes and ears open, you can't possibly live long enough to write all the novels you'll encounter.'
I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.
It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.