Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It’s discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages—100 to zero of the novel.
I had written, for the last few years, about the heat of the moment, a yearning made from pretend, just to entertain me. I’m not sure I can write that way about you.
I write to understand as much as to be understood.
The era has ended. Time to fight for your life and put away your pretend secrets. The mystery, a glass box you loved to play in, has shattered. You are now banned from straddling the line between being truthful and deceptive.
I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.
