Writing in Salon (@Salon), Corinne Purtill (@corinnepurtill) describes her ordeal of writing a book; something most authors can probably identify with.
Four and a half years ago I quit my job and moved continents so that I could write a book. This book was to be a serious yet eminently readable work of narrative nonfiction. It was going to be the kind of book that earned stellar reviews in respected publications and landed me a segment on “The Daily Show,” where you could tell Jon Stewart thought I was funny....
...I set about writing, a thing I believed I loved to do. I was wrong. I liked having written things. Writing them was the worst. I wrote and wrote, and could not believe there was so much still to write. I read and reread drafts until I was no longer sure they were in English. I cut pages of useless and boring exposition that amounted to days of work....
I agonized over every sentence, and I have yet to hear any great writer advise that the best work comes when you ignore your instincts and focus intently on fear and self-doubt....
As the years passed with no sign of a finished book, I took odd jobs to stay afloat....
Finally I finished it and sent it to my agent. Over the next 24 hours I refreshed my email every 10 minutes in the hopes that her breathless, joyful reply would surface. After a few weeks of silence I no longer believed that the book was so good she just needed time to compose herself before writing back. The email mercifully euthanizing our contract eventually came. But by that time I had had a baby, was about to move to London for my husband’s job and had already mourned the end of this little dream....
As the saying goes: ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open your vein.’
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