It usually takes me a year to do a book. A year or eighteen months.
I never wrote anything that was published until I was forty.
A novel may take anywhere from two to five years to write and, in the end, you might manage a couple of thousand dollars on it, no more.
The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.
Actually, the 14 novels were written over a period of just over 6 years.
It generally takes me about nine months from the point the book is conceived to the point my editor sends it off to be typeset.
Out of all of the things I've written, 'Dot' was the quickest from first thoughts to full production.
I wanted to write it long before I wrote Every Night, Josephine! I'd been thinking about it a long time.
I really only have been seriously writing, finishing things and publishing things since January '91.
Each book takes anywhere from two to three years to complete, from concept to outline to final edits. I work on as many as five at a time.
I was nearly 40 when I published my first book. I was a slow starter - or rather, I was slow to gather my work together, though I had published translations, mainly of the Italian poet Montale, by then.
