Frank Peretti Quotes

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

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.

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

Barton Fink got written very quickly, in about three weeks. I don't know what that means.

I can write a book in probably three 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.

When I sit down I write very fast... if I haven't finished a book in two or three months then I think it's not going well.

I don't write a novel every two years.

All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a 'rate of production,' for whom it's a matter of pride to complete, say, a book every year.

Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns.

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.

I am a big outliner. For my adult book, 'The Visibles,' I did not outline, and it took me two years to write because I just didn't outline, and I had no path.

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.

Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.

I like to take writing retreats within a day's drive of home. Less travel time means more time for writing, which is the name of the game here.

I used to think that: whenever I heard that someone had taken 10 years to write a novel, I'd think it must be a big, serious book. Now I think, 'No - it took you one year to write, and nine years to sit around eating Kit Kats.'

When I'm writing a novel or doing other serious writing work, I do it on a schedule that dictates writing either 2,000 words a day or writing until noon. After I hit whichever mark comes first, then I can give my attention to everything else I have to do.

If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft.

Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.

For a writer, New York works well. Literary work is very elitist. I worked two hours a day, maximum, and the time after that was very agreeable. I walked a lot with pleasure. Those two hours augmented the day. I wrote more here than in Paris, an entire chapter of a new novel.

For about twenty years, if I managed to write ten or twelve poems in a year; I considered that a pretty successful year, but I wrote 'The Beforelife' within a year.

Take your time, however long the book needs. I've seen a lot of promising careers go into decline because writers succumbed to the pressure to write faster than was comfortable for them or the story.

I write at a pace that suits me, and sometimes it's two books a year, but most often it's one.

In 2007, I probably wrote four screenplays in the entire year. Every three months I was writing a screenplay.

It's a long process for me since I am unable to write a script faster.