Re-writing a novel

Making art is a pleasure, but what you need most when making a novel is perseverance.

Making a novel is the ultimate Aristotelian experience, Aristotle believing that the form of something is its basic reality.

Making a novel is writing a novel so that it can be re-written into something you've made and not merely written.

Making a novel is like going to yoga class when you don't feel like going and realizing afterwards that because you went to yoga class when you didn't feel like going you were actually doing yoga for the very first time.

Making a novel is not like making a poem, where you're trying to open up language to see what's inside...no, it's not like that.

The writer of a novel is the one who asks, why didn't you look ahead? And the one who answers, no one can look ahead, I'm not equipped to do that, I'm not made that way.

The tension between the intention of the novel and what the novel is actually becoming is the story the novel will eventually tell, if the novelist has the perseverance to tell it.