Peter Jackson's "Temeraire" Author On Writing

By Borys Kit

Naomi Novik is the first-time novelist whose historical fantasy book series “Temeraire”  (featuring the Napoleonic wars with dragons!) was just optioned by Peter Jackson, as first reported here.
The Random House division Del Rey launched the author in the spring, publishing her first three books (His Majesty's Dragon, Thorne of Jade, Black Powder War) monthly as original paperbacks. She is currently penning the fourth book in the series.
Novik's high output is sure to invoke envy from writers everywhere: she writes 3000 - 6000 words a day when she's in "the zone."
“I’m a feast or famine writer," she told me yesterday. "When I’m writing, I’m doing nothing but writing. I don’t answer the phone, my emails don’t get checked regularly, my laundry builds up...I get a first draft done in two months. When it’s happening, the iron is hot! The fires are burning!”
But then she leaves the book alone.
“I have long fallow periods where I let it sit, then I come in and revise heavily.”
Novik’s fourth book should be out in 2007. The fifth book is being planned as the series’ first hardcover entry (in the U.S., that is; in the UK, the books are already hardcover). A sixth one will follow.