A Quote by Frank Peretti
Generally, my notes and outlines comprise more words than my novels. I suppose that's one reason I'm a comparatively slow writer, something that has always bothered me given the fact that other authors can turn out a book every six months while I usually take about two years.
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I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters. In between two of the segments she asked me: "But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?" I said, "Type faster." This was widely quoted, but the "six months" was changed to "six minutes," which bothered me. It's "six months."
And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.
There are innumerable writing problems in an extended work. One book took a little more than six years. You, the writer, change in six years. The life around you changes. Your family changes. They grow up. They move away. The world is changing. You're also learning more about the subject. By the time you're writing the last chapters of the book, you know much more than you did when you started at the beginning.
After something crystallizes, I can write ferociously and write novels in six months, which in the past would have taken me two years.
I've been doing short-form writing for a decade, and six years ago I signed with an agent, and we've been working on figuring out what my book would be. I was always so embarrassed that it took me so long to figure it out, but I think, in retrospect, I just wasn't ready to write a book six years ago. I wasn't confident enough as a writer and I wasn't coherent enough in my worldview. It just took this long for me to be a mature enough writer and be ready to do it.
I can't be bothered to go to the gym, though. I honestly just can't be bothered - it's the most boring thing on Earth. I have tried and every six months I go 'right, I'm going to the gym'. Then I do it for two weeks and get so bored by it.
Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me.
Generally I try to be on set as much as possible, especially during the early part of a season. I read all of the outlines and scripts and look at the auditions and the cuts for my other shows and give notes on all of that. There's a lot to do, but I enjoy nothing more than being on set because that's where the magic happens.
Second novels are bears. As are other people's expectations for them. I think taking the time you need with the second book is key. Writers spend years and years on their first novels and then are often expected to turn out a second at warp speed, a recipe for failure.
There is always a piano in an hotel drawing-room, on which, of course, some one of the forlorn ladies is generally employed. I do not suppose that these pianos are, in fact, as a rule, louder and harsher, more violent and less musical, than other instruments of the kind. They seem to be so, but that, I take it, arises from the exceptional mental depression of those who have to listen to them.
The thing is - do we really need another writer who writes a book every eighteen months, whether the quality is wonderful or not? I mean, maybe. But I can name twenty off the top of my head who do it. Maybe what we need is a writer like me who goes very slow, as well.
When I come to visit my mom - every two or three months - I generally spend five or six hours with her each day. She's always immensely glad to see me, her eldest child, her only son.
Books are just dead words on paper and it is the readers who bring the stories alive. Previously, writers wrote a book and sent it out into the world. A couple of months after publication letters from readers might arrive. And, leaving aside the professional reviews, it is really the reader's opinions that the writer needs. They vote for a book - and a writer - with their hard earned cash every time they go into a bookstore (or online - that's my age showing!) and buy a book.
When I begin writing, I have no idea what my novels are ultimately going to be about. I don't have a plot. I never consider a theme. I don't make notes or outlines.
'Presumed Innocent' was written over a six to seven year period with intervals in between where I was figuring out the end of the book and writing other stuff... My life as a writer was carried on against the odds. I had written four unpublished novels by then... as a writer of fiction, I hadn't gotten very far. I just wanted to do it.
This book will take you two days to read. Did you even see the cover? It’s mostly pink. If you’re reading this book every night for months, something is not right.
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