Serendipity

I’ve just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

OH.MY.GOD. The book is amazing. It’s brilliant and terrifying. Actually it’s turned into one of those ‘why am I trying to do this when there are writers out there doing THIS?’

It’s not remotely a book I would’ve picked up myself, but Julia Bell recommended it to me when I was in the UK. (I think we were talking about ‘truth’ in writing and this was an example.) She’d done a lecture on it recently and she said she’d thought about putting some notes up on her website about it.

So I went to have a look at her website (here) to see if I could find some more about the book. I couldn’t find any notes but I found this from her article ‘Dressing to Thrill’:

‘Sometimes I fear that some writers want to get published more than they want to write. Being a successful writer is a long apprenticeship. Writing a novel is a slow, frustrating process. It takes time and patience to get it right.’

And then I saw Jon’s post from yesterday, which is relevant too.

I remembered that for me it's never been about the publishing, but about the writing - the process - the thinking. That's why I started. Yes, my standards are high and so be it.