ABSTRACT

Writing fiction is for the most part dogged unromantic work. Flaubert spoke of his writing life in these terms, saying he could spend a whole day deciding to insert a comma into a page of text, and the next day deciding to take it out again. Worst still is that black hour when the story loses the clear pure trajectory of its first promising chapters, and in a chill silent midnight the writer knows a familiar clammy sensation: I’m bored with this. I’ve lost my way. It’s gone awry. Why? What happened? It can then seem a miracle that anyone ever finished a novel at all.