Louis Pasteur said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind.' If you're really engaged in the writing, you'll work yourself out of whatever jam you find yourself in.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.
The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that, and then I put it out there and say to you, 'What do you think?' I hope that you think well of it, obviously.
Chance is an element of life. What I try to do is study what I call the mechanics of reality as carefully as I can.
In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: it's the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance.
Publishers love to compartmentalize, and 'Second Chance' was not an easy novel to define.
I get suggestions all the time. People feel quite free at events or even on the street to tell me what they think I should be writing. What I've learned, though, is that this thing, this connection, has to be in place for me to be able to kind of launch into a world imaginatively.
My dad told me that no one could ever make it as a writer, that my chances were equivalent to winning the lottery - which was good for me, because I like to have something to prove.
Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.