A Goodreads user
asked
Veronica Roth:
Based on your past interviews, I know you whipped up Divergent was fairly quickly. How long does it usually take for you to write a full-length novel? Do you have any advice for first time authors who feel want to take their time with their novel and do their ideas and characters justice, but also finish it sooner rather than later?
Veronica Roth
The thing about the speed of Divergent is that when you piece together all the drafting and revising time, it took roughly the same amount of time that many of my other books did: a year and change. Yes, I drafted it quickly, but it was quite short (50,000 words, as opposed to its finished length of 105,000 words) and I would describe that draft as scaffolding. I didn't know that at the time, of course, but it's easy to see now.
It takes me about a year and a half to draft and revise a book once I've committed to a concept. The important thing to note there is that my ideas have to sit for a lot longer than that before I ever draft them. I sent the concept of Chosen Ones to my agent years before the book actually sold; I have a little "first scene" of Poster Girl on my computer from around the same time. Even with Divergent, a few chapters from a version of that story sat for four years before I knew what to make of it. This is why I think it's important to let ideas flow constantly, to take breaks from your "main" project and write up a little paragraph of something new, or a page, or a chapter. Give yourself the opportunity to let something simmer in the background.
As for first time authors-- I find they fall along a particular spectrum. At one end is a writer who's impatient and overly confident, frustrated with the market and convinced they can do better than what's out there; at the other end is a writer who's timid and careful, working and reworking their draft for years and thinking they can control its success by making it perfect. It's hard to give advice without knowing where someone falls on this spectrum.
If you are more impatient, what you need is thoughtful critique of your draft. (No shade; I leaned this way, too.) You need to give yourself a reality check and realize that you don't know everything, either about writing a book or even about writing *your* book. You need to slow down and do the hard work of listening to hard things and maybe even let your draft sit for a few months as you think about other stories, so that you can return to it with a new perspective.
If you're more timid, you need to loosen your grip. You need to understand that no first attempt or second attempt or even fiftieth attempt at writing a book will be perfect. Even when I've put books into the world that I felt were absolutely polished and tightly written, it only takes me a few months to figure out what I could have done better. You can't work and rework a book into perfection. And if you try, you'll just get stuck-- mired in this one idea until every last one of your hopes hang on it, and that's not healthy or practical in this industry where even amazing ideas sometimes fail or get ignored. The best way to get better as a writer is to write more, but thoughtfully. That doesn't only mean write more of the one idea you're obsessed with. It means working on completely new ideas, again and again, to teach yourself how to better develop a story from start to finish.
You can see why this is tricky-- one group needs to slow down and the other needs to speed up. There's no magical solution here. You will develop a sense for "this is as good as I can get it to be" over time, through practice. You won't have that sense now, and that's fine. Just do your best, and if it doesn't work, try again. If that happens to you, let yourself believe that a new story can be even better than the one you had to leave behind.
Writing is work that you can do for a lifetime. It will reward you continuously-- not because of the success it does or does not bring, but because the work is intrinsically rewarding. At least, that's what I think. Best of luck with your work! You can do it!
It takes me about a year and a half to draft and revise a book once I've committed to a concept. The important thing to note there is that my ideas have to sit for a lot longer than that before I ever draft them. I sent the concept of Chosen Ones to my agent years before the book actually sold; I have a little "first scene" of Poster Girl on my computer from around the same time. Even with Divergent, a few chapters from a version of that story sat for four years before I knew what to make of it. This is why I think it's important to let ideas flow constantly, to take breaks from your "main" project and write up a little paragraph of something new, or a page, or a chapter. Give yourself the opportunity to let something simmer in the background.
As for first time authors-- I find they fall along a particular spectrum. At one end is a writer who's impatient and overly confident, frustrated with the market and convinced they can do better than what's out there; at the other end is a writer who's timid and careful, working and reworking their draft for years and thinking they can control its success by making it perfect. It's hard to give advice without knowing where someone falls on this spectrum.
If you are more impatient, what you need is thoughtful critique of your draft. (No shade; I leaned this way, too.) You need to give yourself a reality check and realize that you don't know everything, either about writing a book or even about writing *your* book. You need to slow down and do the hard work of listening to hard things and maybe even let your draft sit for a few months as you think about other stories, so that you can return to it with a new perspective.
If you're more timid, you need to loosen your grip. You need to understand that no first attempt or second attempt or even fiftieth attempt at writing a book will be perfect. Even when I've put books into the world that I felt were absolutely polished and tightly written, it only takes me a few months to figure out what I could have done better. You can't work and rework a book into perfection. And if you try, you'll just get stuck-- mired in this one idea until every last one of your hopes hang on it, and that's not healthy or practical in this industry where even amazing ideas sometimes fail or get ignored. The best way to get better as a writer is to write more, but thoughtfully. That doesn't only mean write more of the one idea you're obsessed with. It means working on completely new ideas, again and again, to teach yourself how to better develop a story from start to finish.
You can see why this is tricky-- one group needs to slow down and the other needs to speed up. There's no magical solution here. You will develop a sense for "this is as good as I can get it to be" over time, through practice. You won't have that sense now, and that's fine. Just do your best, and if it doesn't work, try again. If that happens to you, let yourself believe that a new story can be even better than the one you had to leave behind.
Writing is work that you can do for a lifetime. It will reward you continuously-- not because of the success it does or does not bring, but because the work is intrinsically rewarding. At least, that's what I think. Best of luck with your work! You can do it!
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