Diana Gabaldon Quotes

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

The way I found time to write 'The Imperfectionists' was that I took work as a copy editor at the 'International Herald Tribune' in Paris, working full-time for approximately six months, then taking my savings from that and writing full-time, then returning after six months, and so on, until the book was done!

If I did anything 'next', I would do writing.

It takes a long time to write a novel when you have to keep interrupting your work to earn money.

Sometimes I write less than I'd like but do research. Other times, editor's notes or a copy-edited manuscript or page proofs for a forthcoming novel mean that I need to put my attentions elsewhere for a day or two, but I always come back to writing.

I've never been good with deadlines. My early novels, I wrote by myself. No one knew I was writing a novel; I didn't have a contract.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.

If I'd had more time or been a better writer, I would have tried to put the same ideas and experiences into a novel. But I didn't so I slapped it up on the Web.

I used to write at night. I was teaching school, and I was married, and had to do all the things that one does when one is working and has a family. But I used to write at night.

I still write the occasional short story, and poked at a novel once, but it's just not what I want to do.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

When I started writing, I just hoped for a nice little paperback series.

I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.

Really, what you should tell a novelist is, 'Keep going until you finish the draft. Don't show it to anyone.'

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

When I wrote my novel, 'The Ministry of Special Cases,' I couldn't even brush my teeth. I had to write in isolation from everything else. I thought a play would take away from my fiction, but the more projects I work on, the more time I have.

During my twenties and thirties, my interest in the political poem increased as my apparent access to it declined. I sensed resistances around me. I was married; I lived in a suburb; I had small children.

I have always wanted to write a novel, and I tried many times but could never find the right story. One day, I was walking on the beach, and the idea for 'Groundswell' hit me. I went into the house and started writing and never stopped.

I didn't think I could pull off a novel.

I'm always working on my next novel, even when I'm not.

You know that thing people say, 'poetry is the hardest, stories are the second hardest, novels are the easiest?' I'm here to tell you that novels are the hardest. Writing a novel is unbelievably difficult. It's nightmarish.

If I'm really rolling with a short story, I work on it everywhere and end up with a finished draft in a couple months, but a novel really demands that I step out of my life and vanish into the world of the book.

I always wanted to write novels, even before I had read a lot of novels or had a very good idea of what they were.

It got to the point where most of my time went toward writing novels. I would still occasionally write short stories, but only when I was commissioned by an editor to write for a themed anthology or special issue.