Let the novelists fret about consistency - story writers should feel free to jam; to get things right in new, surprising ways by allowing themselves, now and then, to get things wrong.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A writer is always, always searching, even against her will, against all her better instincts, for the thread of a story. Everything is fodder. Everything is fuel. You can feel it coming on like the tingling of a sore throat. The brain never stops struggling to reshape every experience and feeling into a coherent narrative.
Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.
What one's goal should be is just to become a better writer and to tell different kinds of stories.
For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
The reality of the writer's world is that you set yourself up for disappointment with every success that you deliver because with every success you raise your readers' expectations.
When you are a novelist, you are used to making a narrative do what you want.
Narrative becomes the way you make sense of chaos. That's how you focus the world. It's the only reason you should ever try this writing job.
Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that's what I'm trying to do.
What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it.
I find that most novels are not good all the way through. A story can be good all the way through, every sentence.
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