How to Keep Going
On writing books while the world is going bananas.
My latest novel ANIMAL INSTINCT is about a woman rediscovering her desire in midlife — it’s been called a best book of the year by NPR, Oprah Daily, and more. You can order it here. And hey, if you do get a copy, DM me your receipt and I’ll comp you a paid subscription to this very newsletter, Writing on the Verge (this gives you access to alllll the archives, which otherwise get paywalled after a month) ✨✨✨✨✨
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: Every act of creation is an act of risk. The risk, or one of the risks (along with failure, exposure, even success) is that the time will be wasted. In our frantic late-capitalist Anthropocene Forever-Now, most of us like (or are trained to like) measurable results, immediate returns, and tangible rewards. Though we waste much materially — hello, ocean island of plastic — we hate to waste our time. Our toddler brains have taken over. We don’t like to wait. We? I mean me.
Why on earth would a person take on an ambitious, sprawling, impossibly time-consuming project — like writing a book — that may well, by its very definition and scope, never reach completion?
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