The Writing Life

While I was in the middle of the long, cold slog of writing my first novel, I would often tell people what I was doing and many would say "That's sounds like fun." I would usually reply, "It used to be fun. Right now I'm looking forward to looking back on it." The quote below from Patrick McGrath is one of my favorites for describing the surreal, insane process of battling through the first time:

"The first novel, or at least the writing of it, arouses memories almost none of which are pleasant. Writing a novel is, by now, for many of us, a familiar act of sustained masochism, and when we are predictably overwhelmed by waves of frustration, rage, despair, self-disgust, and, above all, sheer incredulity that we could have ever committed ourselves to an exercise in such utter and total futility – and, moreover, have given months, even years of our lives to it – there is at least the bittersweet consolation that this has happened before. That it happens every time. That it will never stop happening. And that we will someone blarney our way out of the hole and end up for better or worse with a book. No novelist will tell you otherwise. This is what it’s like."