So, while I gave up the notions of publishing at that time, I never stopped editing and refining that book. A few years later, in 1987, I thought I had it ready to go out again.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'd pretty much given up hope of being published, so I just wrote the book I wanted to read.
I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.
I thought that I would have a huge literary novel coming out when I was, like, 29. I quit my banking job, and I was halfway through my second novel - and I will never publish it, because it's very mediocre.
I started out as a novelist and wrote several novels before deciding to publish one, and I fully intend to go back to the form.
I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
I was never confident about finishing a book, but friends encouraged me. When I finished my first book, it was accepted by a publisher right away and became an instant bestseller. One male critic called it the most shocking book he ever read.
If I hadn't been able to get my first book published, I am not sure what I would have done.
When I began to write seriously, 40 years ago now, my chosen form was the novel.
Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form - not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.
My first book was the book that changed my life.
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