Robert Silverberg Quotes

I can only write about two or three pages of fiction a day.

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.

I always write on unlined typing paper and write the first draft in longhand, using cheap Bic pens. I try to write about four pages a day, which usually yields a first draft in six months. I don't plot ahead of time, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants for the first draft.

Can you write 200 words a day? 100? 50? In six months, 50 words a day is 9,000 words. That's 2-3 short stories. If you did 200 words every day, in three months that's 36,000 words. That's half a short novel.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.

It depends on the book and what else is going on during my life, but it usually takes me about six months to write and revise the first draft.

I only did about one novel a year while I was working full time, but since 1993, I've averaged two and a half books a year.

I'm pretty disciplined to keep the momentum of a story going by writing everyday, even if it's only a couple paragraphs or a page or two.

Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.

I don't finish every story, but I probably write and send out three out of five of them.

My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.

I write a thousand words a day.

Here's the secret to finishing that first book. Don't rewrite as you go.

My personal opinion is that, if you're a professional writer, that you do have quotas. So every day I do try to write 800-1,200 words. I don't always achieve it, and the reality is that a lot of the words I write will end up on the cutting-room floor.

No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day's work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

In weeks when I was writing a novel, I followed a five-day schedule, doing about thirty pages a day, so a typical Ace novel would take me six or seven days to write.

I write 2,000 words a day when I write. It sometimes takes three hours, it sometimes takes five hours.

I should be concentrating on writing pages.

I don't have many hours in a day, as I'm essentially a single parent. But fortunately, I'm a really fast writer. My goal is usually 10 pages a day. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but by the end of the week, I aim for at least 10,000 words.

When I think about the books I've written, it probably takes 150,000-200,000 words to get a 50,000 page book. Highlighting something and hitting Cmd-X is second nature.

I wrote 'Legends of the Fall' in nine days, but I had been thinking about it for a few years.

I've always had ideas for more books than I can write.

I've only had four ideas for a novel in my life, and I've written all of them.