I’ve been talking the past few weeks about driving forward, about the endurance, doing the hard work. That’s really the only way books get written. So then when the next question comes and it’s, “So what drives you to do it?”, I have a hard time answering. Because, to me, it’s almost like “why are you breathing oxygen?”
In the latest episode of Westworld— without giving serious spoilers, when confronted with why he’s done the things he’s done, he answers, “I just wanted to tell my stories”. I feel very much the same way. I know the stories I want to tell, I’m never plagued by writers’ block, at least on a macro level. (On a micro level, I sometimes don’t know how a scene is supposed to work, and that’s frustrating. Sometimes a project isn’t quite coming together and gets put to the side… but there’s always more projects in the works.)
Of course, right now I’m in a position of privilege. I’m writing books that are already under contract– doing work that I know where it’s going to go. Back when I was writing books without an agent or a publisher? There I was fueled just by the fire in my gut– that I had to tell the stories of Maradaine, and get it out there in the world. Someone once told me that writing novels was a thing you only did if you can’t imagine not doing it. I think that’s about right. And I’m still not satisfied. Each novel, I’m hungry for.
And I bet you are as well. So get down to those word mines, and get to work. No one else is going to do it for you.