on writing

One of the mirages that resides in many books today, of course, for him and for many of us, is the idea of its author being a “middle class writer.” That appellation seems somewhat fantastical, something borne of secret inheritances and side hustles. Becoming one has become the literary version of the illusory American Dream. It rhymes with the “do

Sometimes writers sit down and it's all pouring out of them. Each word - exactly the right one - is just sitting there, juicy and bursting with potential, easily within reach on a nearby branch. Every idea flows naturally from the last and in an order which provides a neat crystalline structure to the whole endeavour.