John Irving Quotes

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

I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.

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

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.

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

I write and write and write, and then I edit it down to the parts that I think are amusing, or that help the storyline, or I'll write a notebook full of ideas of anecdotes or story points, and then I'll try and arrange them in a way that they would tell a semi-cohesive story.

When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.

I am a very linear thinker, so I write beginning to end. I write hundreds of pages per book that never make it into print.

Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.

Writing novels is sitting in a room by yourself for a year.

I do the same kind of rewriting that I do in the shorts that I do in long books - and that is a lot. The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

Holy cow - everything about writing a novel is hard for me.

I don't know how everyone writes a novel; that sounds exhausting.

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

I'm very involved in the writing on every level.

I have friends who are capable of writing a very rough draft and then going back and embroidering - they're sort of the cathedral builders of fiction. I never really know what I'm doing, and all my pleasure's on the level of the line.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

Usually I'll write all the way through to an end, and then I go back and try to fix the ending so that it makes sense. I don't think out the plot ahead of time.

For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book.

I do extensive research before I begin writing, but only a fraction of the research goes into the novels. The writer does not need to tell the reader everything. But one hopes that the writer's belief in his characters is evident in the telling, just as the mood created in the writer's mind comes through in the atmosphere of the scene described.

In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed.

A lot of aspiring writers are all ready to write a novel, but they don't know how to write sentences.

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

The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along.