"My children dictate my schedule--I have done vast amounts since they were born because they keep me from my desk and make me impatient to get back to it. I don't count words so much anymore, or note beginnings and endings. I work on several things at once, so there is always a file open and no such thing as a blank page. I like working. What discipline I have comes from the fact that I don't do any of the other things I am supposed to. Housework, personal administration--everything goes to hell. My husband cooks. We don't starve."
Anne Enright in The Secret Miracle: The Novelist's Handbook.
3 comments:
I love this passage! Not least because I sympathize with everything else going to hell.... (*ignores dishes*)
I had better write down this title and read this!
Saleema, I'm glad I'm not the only one who looks around and sees it all going to hell! The house is always in a worse space when I have writing time. There's no way I'm sacrificing a moment of that for dishes.
Carrie, the book as whole was a bit of a disappointment. The back jacket says "The world's best contemporary novelists engage in a wide-ranging, insightful, and oft-surprising roundtable on the art of writing fiction" but it's pretty clear from the start that there was no roundtable. The writers answered a list of questions. I wished it was a transcript of a discussion. I didn't finish the whole book, as I found it rather disappointing as a whole. See if your library has it before buying it!
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