The essential art of rewriting

I am always nervous about giving advice to aspiring novelists. My instinct is not to advise at all but to ask them, quite earnestly, if they are sure that this is what they want to do. If the answer is “I think so…” then I am tempted to steer them towards a different course. The answer, be it right or wrong, must be “Yes.” The mismatch between the general population’s assumptions about authors’ working lives and reality never fails to startle me; the supposed glamour, freedom, wealth and influence rarely materialise. It is a solitary, often lonely job, frequently maddening and fraught with frustration at the impossible task of turning these wild ideas into something that can be understood, as clearly as possible, by a stranger. There are moments of triumph: an almost perfect sentence, a publishing deal, a printed book. And there are days when I do not speak to anyone other than the people I have invented. It is less a vocation and more a compulsion. I am not so much a writer as I am someone who needs to write. For all the loneliness, financial difficulty and self-doubt, there is nothing else I am prepared to do […]