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The novelist is more like a pregnant woman who delivers her own child unaided. A messy procedure, with lots of groaning.

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Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things—like composing a fresh metaphor, but...more

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If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.

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Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' conscience; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you f...more

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Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, obo...more

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So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners?

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Lunatics are writers whose works write them, Bat." "Not all lunatics are writers, Mrs. Rey-believe me." "But most writers are lunatics, Bat-believe me...more

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Only one-tenth of what you write will make it into your manuscript, but when you knock on that tenth” – I rap my knuckles on the table – “you’ll hear ...more

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And grade every simile and metaphor from one star to five, and remove any threes or below. It hurts when you operate, but afterwards you feel much bet...more