Kate Atkinson Quotes

I started blogging in 2006 when I had sold my first novel but it had not yet been published, in those anxious months in between while I learned the whole process.

In the summer of '80, Silhouette bought my first book.

Believe it or not, I sold my first novel, 'Crank,' with only seventy-five pages complete. It was in verse then, and it was hard-hitting then.

I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.

I used my NEA fellowship to write my novel, 'In Country,' which was published by Harper & Row in 1985.

You don't sit up in a cave and write the Great American Novel and know it is utterly superb, and then throw it page by page into the fire. You just don't do that. You send it out. You have to send it out.

At 18, my first short story was published - I was paid a penny a word by a science fiction magazine. I continued to write, and five years later I published my first novel, 'Sweetwater.'

I had a few stories and longer pieces published, but my first proper novel came in 2003, called 'Dead I Well May Be.'

I sold my very first novel when I was 24 or 25 years old.

Around the time I turned 30, I wanted to publish a novel.

That wasn't a bad price for a first book. My agent upped it as much as possible. I was 27 and had nothing behind me. I was working like a fool to earn a living and pay for my apartment.

I was twenty-seven when I began to write seriously, and after two years of rejections, my first book, 'The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo,' was accepted for publication.

It took seventeen years to get from my second novel, 'Truck,' to my third, 'Geek Love.'

When people write a novel, they want to have that reach and that impact. To get it with a first novel, you can either see it as an albatross or a calling card.

I always grew up with the idea that in order to be a successful writer, I should have a book published.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

I'd never written a novel before, and I wrote a novel, and that turned out OK.

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didn't publish my first book until I was 41.

I wrote for 10 years before I even started the 'Percy Jackson' series.

I didn't know it was possible to be successful as a writer, so I wasn't afraid to fail.

After 20 years, a million written words, and nine rejected novels, I finally landed a book contract.

I was twenty-seven when I came up with the idea for my first novel.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

I finished my first novel - it was around 300 pages long - when I was 16. Wrote one more before I got out of high school, then wrote the first Lincoln Perry novel when I was 19. It didn't sell, but I liked the character and I knew the world so I tried what was, in my mind, a sequel. Wrote that when I was 20, and that one made it.

When I sold my first book, 'A Conspiracy of Tall Men,' it was part of a two-book deal. It wasn't hugely lucrative, but it was enough money for me to quit the paralegal job I had in San Francisco.