Jane Green Quotes

There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.

A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.

I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels.

I don't know exactly where the ideas come from. One day, a sentence just popped into my head - 'There was going to be trouble, and, hell, he just wasn't in the mood for it' - and I knew I had a novel.

When I started working on 'Stay With Me,' I thought it would take two years to complete the novel.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

I've never really thought of writing books. I've never thought about stories as a part of a collection.

Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.

It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

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.

I read all the time. Sometimes I get asked if I've thought about writing a novel.

From the beginning, when I first got an idea for a story and wondered if I could write it, it has always been the story that has driven me.

Writing novels is the most exciting.

A lot of times, the inspiration for a novel is a messy bird's nest of shiny things. Little things that don't make a whole lot of sense or that, no matter how hard you look, cannot be found directly in the finished book.

I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash.

I really absolutely loved writing my first book.

Today I began the novel that I determined to be great.

I think a conceptual idea comes to me first - something I've been mulling over a lot right before I feel like writing a book - and then the characters start to develop around it.

I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.