Every book is like starting over again. I've written books every way possible - from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
With each book you write you have to learn how to write that book - so every time, you have to start all over again.
I don't read books regularly, because I'm always writing them. I've written 30 books, thousands of pages.
Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.
The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along.
I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.
When I had worked on my first book, I had readily shown bits and pieces to everyone - for encouragement, to force myself to write.
I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.
I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.
The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.
When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.