I tend not to write books that are really, really long, and I'm also a pretty fast writer.
I spend about a year between novels.
I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.
All novelists write in a different way, but I always write in longhand and then do two versions of typescript on a computer.
Every book takes me from 35 to 41 days to write. I don't know why that is. I've tried to get it down to 30 or 31, depending on the length of the month, but it won't work. I don't drink while I'm writing because it fuddles my logical processes, but when I finish a book I go down to the kitchen and pour myself a big belt.
While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed.
I spend a lot of time outlining before I write the first word.
I've never made an outline for any novel that I've written. Never.
Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.
I very seldom read back into what I've written.
I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?'
My writing process is ritualized and monotonous, but there's no other way to get the job done. All other fiction writers I've met say the same thing.
I'm obsessive. That's the word for me. I obsess - perhaps to the point where it's moderately dysfunctional. I tend to put a book through about 100 revisions. If anything, that's an understatement. If there's another author out there who does this sort of revision, I would really like to meet him. Maybe we could form some sort of support group.
Supposedly, some writers work in rowdy coffee shops or compose whole novels to Megadeth, but when I write, I wear a pair of chainsaw operator's earmuffs.
It's essential to have sacred time for writing. All successful authors have some daily commitment to keep on-track and moving forward.
If you're a writer, and you write fiction, that's not all you read.
When I write a novel I start each morning by reading for 20 minutes.
I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch.
I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my face.
For about as long as I've been writing fiction, I've kept a record of the books I've read.
When I am writing novels I don't read a lot of novels so I try to catch up in-between.
If I tried to write long-hand, I suppose I'd never finish a novel. I edit too much as I write - the paper would be "white-out" and sharpie marks. Writing with a computer works for me, so I stick with it.
I never have written every day. When I'm writing a book, I write Monday through Friday. I always try to take Saturday and pretend to have some sanity.
