At least for me, writing a book is continual exposure to blind spots. There were things I wanted to be true and wanted to believe, but it always got more complicated in the fiction.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writing is such a solitary thing, so it's nice, when I'm discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction.
For me, writing a novel is more like digging a well than climbing a mountain - some heroic thing where I set out to conquer. I just sit quietly for a few years, and then it starts to become something.
I primarily read fiction, and I read a good many wonderful books while writing 'The Visibles.'
My theory is that sometimes writers write books because they want to read them, and they aren't there to be read. And I think that was true of me.
The act of writing is a way of tricking yourself into revealing something that you would never consciously put into the world. Sometimes I'm shocked by the deeply personal things I've put into books without realizing it.
To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.
I like to believe, as a writer, that anybody who isn't a reader yet has just not found the right book.
Fiction is the thing I esteem most in my own work; I feel that, even if it's no good, only I could have written those books.
The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.
I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.
No opposing quotes found.