Walter Jon Williams Quotes

Usually it takes me about nine to 12 months to write a book.

Each of my books took roughly one and a half years to write. Some may have taken a shorter time to write the draft and a longer time to revise, while others were the opposite.

There's not too much difference between writing a picture book and writing a collection of a hundred poems or so, except that the bigger books take a lot longer to do.

It usually takes me a year to do a book. A year or eighteen months.

I tend not to write books that are really, really long, and I'm also a pretty fast writer.

I can write a book in probably three months.

Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for 'Seesaw Girl,' eight months for 'Shard,' three years for 'When My Name Was Keoko!' The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish.

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.

If I'm in a state about a book, I'll get up at 6 A.M. and write before breakfast, but usually I'll start afterwards and then work a full day with a break for lunch.

Typically, a book takes me about a year to write.

If I'm going really, really fast, I can do a page of finished text a day, on average.

I had no idea how long books were supposed to be.

I've written books that have taken me fifteen years, from first sentence to last, and some that only take three or four months.

The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.

I wrote 'Sophie's World' in three months, but I was only writing and sleeping. I work for 14 hours a day when I'm working on a book.

It may sound a bit like an army barracks, but the truth of the matter is: there must be some time laid aside for arranging, time for working on either a book or an article - I've written two articles in the last four months for the New York Times book review section.

I write best in the morning, and I can only write for about half a day, that's about it.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.

'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.

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.

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.

It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words.

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.