A Quote by Rose Tremain
A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.
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Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.
It usually takes me about three years to research and write one of my historical sagas; this is one reason why I take medieval mystery breaks, for they can be completed in only a year.
I still find the idea of a research-heavy or historical novel daunting. That's something I've had in mind for a while: like, would you research for a year and then start writing? I sit down, and I just don't know how to write it.
It takes me two to three years to write a novel. A screenplay is 100 pages and takes five years.
I feel that this is my first year, that next year is an election year, that the third year is the mid point, and that the fourth year is the last chance I'll have to make a record since the last two years; I'll be a candidate again. Everything I do in those last two years will be posturing for the election. But right now I don't have to do that.
I don't want to write a novel per year. I know that I need a break of one or two years. So maybe I invent some new, urgent activity so I don't fall into the trap of starting a new novel.
The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.
Americans are so direct. They'd ask me, 'What's your five-year plan? Do you have a five-year plan?' I don't know what I'm having for my tea tonight let alone a five-year plan.
Writing takes a lot of patience. It usually takes me a year to write a book. One time, it took me 14 years to write a book, not that I worked on it every day.
I won so many years in Seattle and then to go to Cleveland... I had a pretty nice year the first year I got there and then the last two years, we just weren't able to make it to the playoffs.
I gave up accounting. I went in for about six months writing ad copy. I was fired from that, and then another guy and I did a kind of poor man's Bob and Ray kind of syndicated radio show. Then I decided to stick it out and see what happened. I'd give it a year, a year became two years, and then two years became three years, and then along came the record album.
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.
I had this whole plan when I graduated high school: I was going to go to college, date a few guys, and then meet THE guy at the end of my freshman year, maybe at the beginning of my sophomore year. We'd be engaged by graduation and married the next year. And then, after some traveling, we'd start our family. Four kids, three years apart. I wanted to be done by the time I was 35.
I notice that I only publish once every four years. It takes a couple of years to write a book and then, for me, for one reason or another, it usually takes about a year of sort of dicking around before I start up. I write a review or little magazine pieces and touring with the other book. But mainly it's just you're not ready, I'm not ready to start another. You're just not up for it.
Over the years, many executives have said to me with pride: 'Boy, I worked so hard last year that I didn't take any vacation.' I always feel like responding, "You dummy. You mean to tell me you can take responsibility for an eighty-million-dollar project and you can't plan two weeks out of the year to have some fun?
I don't write constantly; it's two serials and a novel a year.
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