Then about 1951 I began writing again, painfully, a novel I called in the beginning A Life Sentence on Earth, but which developed into The Tree of Man.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.
I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.
At thirty-five, having spent over twenty years running varied businesses for my family, I decided to sit down and write my first novel. I had never written anything longer than a couple of pages till then and was foolishly attempting to write a hundred-thousand words.
Sometime early in life, I developed the notion - one which I have never relinquished - that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.
I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.
I don't think I've ever read an old book through from start to finish. Not after more than six months after writing it, that is.
A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.
Today I began the novel that I determined to be great.
I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties.