Melissa Marr Quotes

I spend about a year between novels.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that I liked telling stories, and I decided that I would try writing. Ten years later, I finally got a book published. It was hard. I had no skills. I knew nothing about the business of getting published. So I had to keep working at it.

I urge aspiring writers to write three full-length novels before contemplating publication.

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

I started out as a novelist and wrote several novels before deciding to publish one, and I fully intend to go back to the form.

I wrote my first novel-length story when I was 14 but had no idea what to do with it. Brisbane was a long way from the publishing industry then. Nowhere's a long way from the publishing industry now.

Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

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

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

I tell my students that with a 200-page novel, you are going to write 100 pages that don't make the final cut. See it as an opportunity, although it took me a while to enjoy that 'lost in the woods' feeling.

I don't think anybody submits their first story and sells right away.

I am actually hoping to write a series of books! The Amazon was the first one I got finished and have managed to get published! I have plenty more ideas up my sleeve!

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.

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

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.

Writing takes a lot of patience. It usually takes me a year to write a book. One time, it took me 14 years to write a book, not that I worked on it every day.

The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.

Writing a novel is a huge adventure; when it's going well it's more fun than fun. When it stutters to a halt put it aside. Go for a swim, go for a walk, take a week off. Don't panic or be afraid; you and your characters are in it together. Trust them to come to your rescue.

Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.

With any novel that you begin, you can't foresee how difficult or easy it's going to be, and you can't really prepare yourself. You just have a take it one step at a time and know that it's all right to keep going - you can always fix it.

When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer.

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.

Can you write 200 words a day? 100? 50? In six months, 50 words a day is 9,000 words. That's 2-3 short stories. If you did 200 words every day, in three months that's 36,000 words. That's half a short novel.