Five years of my life and the dream that I had of myself, all down the tubes because I couldn't pull off something other people seemed to pull off with relative ease: a novel. By then I wasn't even interested in a Great American Novel. I would have been elated with the eminently forgettable New Jersey novel ... read more
This is a great article that people who are not writers will read as "exotic" and not really understand. Anybody who is a real, true, genuine writer has felt this, suffered it in spirit and in the flesh. And a number of those who have probably never felt it, never doubted their ability to write for even a split second, believing that writing is as simple as sitting down and putting word to page - for 700 pages or so - might very well be the authors of some major bestsellers.
ReplyDeleteGreat article! I saw his piece on the Oprah magazine and saved it for reading again and again. Junot writes the truth. I always marvel when people say that their characters "speak through them." When I'm writing, the only think my characters tell me is "You dumb girl! That's not right. I'd never speak like that. Not in a million years." So to know that Junot struggles through his pages like the rest of us, and just sticks with it until it works, is very inspiring. Thanks for posting Claudio.
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