Yann Martel Quotes

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

I write very slowly.

I kind of like to write fast. It keeps the pacing up. And it keeps me off the streets.

I like the physical action of writing down by hand, and I don't just use it for writing my fiction.

Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.

And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.

Each of my books took roughly one and a half years to write. Some may have taken a shorter time to write the draft and a longer time to revise, while others were the opposite.

All novelists write in a different way, but I always write in longhand and then do two versions of typescript on a computer.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

I was fascinated with the writing process and seeing the evolution of a sketch and how it would change up to the minute before it went on the air.

I always write on unlined typing paper and write the first draft in longhand, using cheap Bic pens. I try to write about four pages a day, which usually yields a first draft in six months. I don't plot ahead of time, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants for the first draft.

When I need the idea, I can find it immediately. I have a horror of rewriting or deleting; the parts of my composition are carried in my head 'till I can write them down, even to the last note. Then I do not alter a jot.

I write slowly. I actually write quickly, but I throw out so much material.

I don't write quickly, and I don't want to.

It takes me ages to write stuff.

If I were to try to describe the way in which I write, the only word I would use without qualification is 'slowly.'

My first five novels were written longhand. So were hosts of short stories.

I still write in long hand. I type like a chimpanzee.

I've been taking longer to write stories lately.

I do so much revising as I go along; I wonder how I could write books if I hadn't grown up in the computer age. I think I'd be a very different writer. I find myself cutting and pasting, changing things around and deleting whole paragraphs constantly.

I've never been a fast writer.

I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.

In weeks when I was writing a novel, I followed a five-day schedule, doing about thirty pages a day, so a typical Ace novel would take me six or seven days to write.

I write 2,000 words a day when I write. It sometimes takes three hours, it sometimes takes five hours.

I can only write about two or three pages of fiction a day.