Tom Rachman Quotes

I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.

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.

It usually takes me about three years to research and write one of my historical sagas; this is one reason why I take medieval mystery breaks, for they can be completed in only a year.

I used to write my books at night when I was a freelancer with no children. I used to really work in huge spurts - I could turn around a revision in two weeks, I used to be able to write 10,000 words a day. It's like, 'Wow, what happened to that?' That's just gone.

'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.

I was writing 'Outlander' for practise and didn't want anyone to know I was doing it. So I couldn't very well announce to my husband that I was quitting my job and abandoning him with three small children to visit Scotland to do research for a novel that I hadn't told him I was writing.

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

I've had menial jobs, and 'professional writer' isn't one of them.

Put all of your savings on autopilot, and you won't likely notice the missing cash.

I knew I'd have to go to work in real estate or something else or I could never finish my novel.

When I sit down I write very fast... if I haven't finished a book in two or three months then I think it's not going well.

As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

In all seriousness, people think that it's the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words - that's how long a novel is.

Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns.

I used up every cent I earned as an actress.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

Sometimes I really need the money, really need to go straight to work. But if I had the absolute choice - money no object, my mortgage paid off - I'd really just work once or twice a year - but wouldn't everybody! - or at least do a different job sometimes.

I taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the 'Time Warp Trio' novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds.

I wanted to find something I could do at home. I sat down with a friend and made a list of all the things I could try, and one of them was writing a novel.

My first published novel, 'American Rust,' took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.

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.

Eventually, I decided that if I was going to really write a novel, I couldn't do it in New York City while holding down a job. You need a constant money source to live in New York City unless you're independently wealthy, which I'm not.

I've been writing full-time since I was 23.