Ayobami Adebayo Quotes

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

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

I started writing novels by not thinking about actually writing a whole novel - that felt altogether too daunting. I thought out a rough idea, then wrote chapter by chapter, and then by the time I'd hit 40,000 words, it was a challenge just to see if I could get to the end.

It depends on the book and what else is going on during my life, but it usually takes me about six months to write and revise the first draft.

'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 really want to write another novel, and I am trying to come up with what the story will be. As I learned with 'Groundswell,' I can't force it; I just have to wait for it to come to me.

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

As far as personal philosophies go, I think you should know your ending. I know that's radically different from a lot of other writers who just organically like to find the story. Other than that, I try different things and mess around. I'm still just playing a good bit.

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.

I never know how a novel is going to end, because you don't really know what's going to be at the bottom of a novel until you excavate it.

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

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.

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

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

I never know as a writer when I set out into a novel where it's going to take me.

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'm always writing. There is always a story brewing in my head.

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 had just begun an M.A. in Creative Writing, and I had to write a novel, so I began writing a novel that later became 'A Life Apart.'

When I am working on an epic-length book, the writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five years to get through all the drafts. The book is done when I am exhausted.

Normally, I spend a week on the outline and take two weeks to write the book.

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

Oh you know, I've been writing a novel.

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.

Inspiration is easy. The hard part is getting the inspiration onto 300 pages in an interesting, cohesive, easy-to-read but hard-to-forget story.