Novel Writing quotes:

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I binge write. I think it's because I started seriously writing by participating in National Novel Writing Month, an online-based challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. -- Erin Morgenstern
NaNo[ National Novel Writing Month] is an awesome opportunity to stretch your writing muscles and gives you permission to write in a way you probably wouldn't do in a normal circumstance. -- Michelle J. Howard
Novel writing wrecks homes. -- C. S. Forester
Novel writing is solitary work. -- Mohsin Hamid
The central problem of novel-writing is causality. -- Jorge Luis Borges
Novel writing is like heroin addiction; it takes everything you've got. -- James N. Frey
Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know. -- C. S. Forester
Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms. -- Barbara Pym
I wish every American explored the importance of novel writing, identity, honesty, character and place in fresh-ass ways. -- Kiese Laymon
Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously, -- Richard Power
There isn't, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry. -- Khaled Hosseini
Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment. -- Rick Moody
The recent extraordinary discovery in Photography, as applied in the operations of the mind, has reduced the art of novel-writing to the merest mechanical labour. -- Lewis Carroll
When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float. -- Margaret Atwood
Novel writing, to me, is all about language: choosing your words, finding the characters within the words and just really agonizing over every word. It's really crafting this whole piece from nothing. -- Jonathan Tropper
The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time. -- Wilkie Collins
Novel writing is the slowest art form in the world. It is not a sprint. It is not even a marathon. It is a series of marathons that stretch over and over across a continent. -- Mohsin Hamid
I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing. -- William Faulkner
A logic proof is: you get a starting point and an ending point, and you have to get there through all these different steps and tautologies. I approach novel writing that way. When I get to the end I have to go back and connect everything. -- Heidi Julavits
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If I'm writing a novel, I'll probably get up in the morning, do email, perhaps blog, deal with emergencies, and then be off novel-writing around 1.00pm and stop around 6.00pm. And I'll be writing in longhand, a safe distance from my computer. If I'm not writing a novel, there is no schedule, and scripts and introductions and whatnot can find themselves being written at any time and on anything. -- Neil Gaiman
There isn't, unfortunately, any way of discovering whether you can write a publishable novel except by writing it. -- John Braine
Writing a novel is agony. -- George Orwell
Oh you know, I've been writing a novel. -- Jarvis Cocker
Facebook is the novel we are all writing -- Katie Roiphe
Writing a novel is a lot like reading one. -- Katherine Center
So, I outlined a horror novel and started writing. -- George Stephen
Novel writing is World Building & Word Weaving (Neil Postman's terms). -- J.M. Varner
The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it. -- Ernest Hemingway
What we know about writing the novel is the novel. -- Eudora Welty
I wish I could spend six years writing one novel. -- Paullina Simons
I always knew writing a novel was a great thing. -- James Salter
Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel. -- Donna Tartt
The biggest downside to being a novelist is writing the novel. -- Jill Barnett
There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. -- Stephen King
I am writing my second novel for children for Simon and Schuster. -- Marlee Matlin
Try writing...a list, a letter, a journal, a novel, a declaration. -- Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet
I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs. -- Jess Row
You know, I can imagine not writing a novel and writing poetry only. -- Vikram Seth
Ironically, writing a novel is not a way to sort out your confusion. -- Curtis Sittenfeld
I don't feel the need to prove myself by writing the next generational novel. -- Camilla Lackberg
After writing each novel, I would spend days poring over suggestions from my editor. -- Ashwin Sanghi
I find coming up with a title the hardest part of writing a novel. -- Sara Shepard
Writing a novel that crosses genres is a risk, but one well worth taking. -- Chet Williamson
For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel. -- Lynn Abbey
When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person. -- Daphne du Maurier
As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama. -- Tom Perrotta
While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed. -- Jane Gardam
The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel. -- Jane Smiley
I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay, rather than the novel. -- Alain de Botton
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. -- W. Somerset Maugham
It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long. -- Jonathan Ames
The only justification for writing a novel is that it should be wonderful. Adequate is inadequate. -- Janet Burroway
Writing a novel is like building a wall brick by brick; only amateurs believe in inspiration. -- Frank Yerby
I'm trying to get every man involved in art, into experimental music, or painting, or novel-writing." -- Harvey Pekar
Everyone my age had written a novel and I was still having difficulty writing a paragraph. -- Ernest Hemingway
It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer. -- E. O. Wilson
Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity. -- Haruki Murakami
Often it doesn't occur to you what kind of novel you're writing until quite late on. -- Martin Amis
Writing a novel is easier than writing a memoir; you are not constrained by the truth. -- Steve Bisley
When I start writing a novel, I have no sense of direction, no idea, really nothing. -- William Gibson
I read all the time. Sometimes I get asked if I've thought about writing a novel. -- Noah Baumbach
Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure. -- Tom Robbins
Building a dollhouse is a lot like writing a novel because you are God of the Universe. -- Jill McCorkle
The most exciting part of writing a novel is when the characters take control of the story -- Brandt Legg
The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it. -- Diane Johnson
Each piece of writing I undertake, whether a story, novel, play, or poem, begins with an image. -- Norman Lock
Novel-writing is a settling, lovely space. I call it self-indulgent - I feel mildly guilty about it. -- Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration. -- Charles Stross
Just about everybody has written a first novel that they throw away before writing their actual first novel. -- Daniel Handler
I started writing half a paragraph of a mystery novel, half a paragraph there, and they were terrible. -- Rabih Alameddine
For me, the process of writing a novel happens mostly in your head before you actually start writing. -- Dan Chaon
Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. You don't know what the hell is going on. -- Lily King
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When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. -- Ernest Hemingway
I think the main thing to remember when writing a novel is to stay true to the characters. -- Cassandra Clare
A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that. -- Louise Penny
I set out to write a screenplay but, since my early 20s, had dreamed of writing a novel. -- Graeme Simsion
Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people. -- Sylvia Plath
Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant. -- Iain Banks
When I am writing a novel I try not to read great prose stylists into which I will fall. -- Frederick Busch
Writing a novel is like trying to solve a very long mathematical equation. Changing anything can change everything else. -- Carl Sagan
'The Fourth Hand' was a novel that came from twenty years of screenwriting concurrently with whatever novel I'm writing. -- John Irving
The Fourth Hand' was a novel that came from twenty years of screenwriting concurrently with whatever novel I'm writing. -- John Irving
The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems. -- Khaled Hosseini
Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously. -- Richard Powers
My first novel is loaded with food references largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry. -- Jan Karon
Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational. -- James M. Cain
I've got an original graphic novel called 'The Indian and the Bandit' that I'm writing with a childhood friend. -- Michael McMillian
I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification. -- Jami Attenberg
When I was 23 and about to go to law school, I thought I'd spend the summer writing a novel. -- John Casey
Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like having a baby when you have nowhere to live. -- Lucy Ellmann
You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing. -- Gene Wolfe
When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer. -- Umberto Eco
I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since. -- Sue Grafton
It is so much hard work writing your first novel. You're not even sure that it is possible to do. -- Asa Larsson
Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again. -- Sarah Dessen
Novel writing should never be confused with journalism. Unfortunately, in the case of Primary Colors, a fair number of journalists confused. -- Joe Klein
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I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station. -- John Irving
In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending. -- Don DeLillo
Writing a novel, I am making is an object that has a life and identity of its own, apart from me. -- Jay Neugeboren
A certain luxury when you get to writing a novel is to have the space to have your characters just banter. -- David Benioff
My intention was never to write a "trans novel" - which is perhaps an effective strategy for writing a trans novel. -- Vivek Shraya
Writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage. -- Jonathan Carroll
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties. -- John Irving
Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain. -- Salman Rushdie
There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end. -- C. S. Forester
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Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them. -- Virginia Woolf
My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era. -- Ken Follett
I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982. -- J. A. Jance
When you're writing a novel, you're still telling a story. But you're telling it very differently. It's a craft like anything else. -- Howard Gordon
The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection. -- Winifred Holtby
One of the ready advantages of writing a road or quest story is that it mirrors the experience of writing a novel. -- Chang-Rae Lee
All writing is an act of self-exploration. Even a grocery list says something about you; how much more does a novel say? -- Steven Saylor
I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it. -- Dean Koontz
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. -- Mordecai Richler
I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done. -- Sarah Dessen
You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it. -- Jonathan Coe

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