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“Writing—the writing it down—has increasingly become the least important part of the process. Living in the world of the novel, existing as the characters, viewing the day-to-day from their perspective, is the most important thing.” —Jeff VanderMeer, author of Dead Astronauts
“Sometimes at the end of an eight-hour day I’d have a single paragraph to show for it.” —Dexter Palmer, author of Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen
A debut memoirist speaks up about post-publication blues and offers some suggestions for how to cure them.
“I don’t trust any readers! And readers shouldn’t trust any writers. We’re all scoundrels, down to the last.” —Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love
“I didn’t always feel like writing but I still made myself sit down and do it. I practiced discipline and worked towards inspiration.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King
“Nearly everything about writing a book is hard. The hope is that it’s harder, in some way, not to.” —Oliver Baez Bendorf, author of Advantages of Being Evergreen
In her fifth collection, The Carrying, Ada Limón digs deep down to the roots of what she sees happening in the world today—and she is deeply troubled by what she finds.
A fiction writer breaks up with her novel and learns that sometimes it’s more important to follow your intuition than take advice.
“In college I had a fiction teacher tell me to make every sentence so good that the reader would have to read the next one. So basic and obvious but I needed to hear it.” —Jami Attenberg, author of All This Could Be Yours
“I sometimes wish the writing process for me was faster, but things need to percolate in their own time.” —Mimi Lok, author of Last of Her Name
