18 January 2013

What She Said: Anne Enright

"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:

saleema said...

I love this passage! Not least because I sympathize with everything else going to hell.... (*ignores dishes*)

Carrie Snyder said...

I had better write down this title and read this!

m said...

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!