Colson Whitehead Quotes

I wrote my first novel, 'Deadline,' in 1994 as an experiment.

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

Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me.

My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.

Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.

'Library of Souls' is longer than 'Hollow City' by a considerable margin, but this time I was on the right track from the beginning, so I never had to start over. It took about 15 months, all told.

'The Secret Life of Bees' was my first novel, so I had no process. I was flying by the seat of my pants, as they say, trying to understand how I, as a novelist, would work with story.

I've been writing since I was about thirteen but didn't start a book until 2007. I spent four years writing a sci-fi novel before I wrote 'The Bone Season' at nineteen.

I feel like I've got a novel in me somewhere, but that's something... I was just talking to a buddy of mine about it, who's a writer as well, and he's nearly done with his first novel, and it's taken him 11, 12 years to do it. And I can totally understand; it's a long process.

I'm remembering one book that I wrote, 'Fourth Grade Rats,' that took a month to write, but most of them, full-length novels, I would say about a year.

I was swimming in my swimming pool when 'The Secret Lovers' popped entire into my head. I got out, dried off, went upstairs, and finished the book in about 50 days.

I started a novel right before 'The Imitation Game,' so it's funny now, four years later, to be coming almost back to finishing it.

My first, 'Room on the Roof,' was the longest book I've written.

If I'm really rolling with a short story, I work on it everywhere and end up with a finished draft in a couple months, but a novel really demands that I step out of my life and vanish into the world of the book.

I spend about a year between novels.

When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

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

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all.

Thirteen years I took on this last book.

'Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.

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

It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.

Writing a book is a long and difficult process for me. I'm a slow writer, so I spend the year with Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in my head. I was thinking about this the other day. I wrote the first book in 1987. Literally every day since that time, Elvis and Joe have been in my head. They're always there. I started these guys because I like them.

The story grew, got way bigger than the contest rules called for, and next thing I knew I had a book.