Free to Write Your 1st Novel
28th April 2016 | for Creatives | Jhumpa Lahiri, your 1st book, creative process, novel writing, writing, creative freedom |
"That pure freedom you only have when you write your first book. No one was waiting for it. No one expected it; nobody knew I was doing it. Nobody cared. There was total indifference, which I think is so beautiful and healthy for the creative process, to feel that nobody is listening and waiting and expecting."
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Write What You Want
"The biggest for me [by self-publishing] is the freedom to write what I want when I want. I can jump genres and write several novels a year. Traditional publishing is much too restrictive. I don't want to pump out the same book over and over. I want to challenge myself and produce the work that I feel is missing from the marketplace."
Give Your Mind a Chance to Refresh
"Breaks give your mind a chance to refresh. I write multiple books at once, and I'm always thinking about them, even if I'm not at a computer. It's a habit I picked up as a litigator: You have 1,000 facts in your head, and the most important thing isn't that you know them all- it's that you crystallize them, so that you can present them clearly. Epiphanies don't occur like a spark; they're actually ideas that have been floating around in your brain for a while. By the time I sit down to write, my thoughts are well organized and come out cleanly."
Write What You Know 2
"Write what you know really means that a writer has to mine her personal experiences for the thoughts and emotions to make the fictional situations of a novel feel realistic. This includes events and personality traits in the author's own experience, plus those she observes in other people's lives. Emotions, insecurities, personality quirks, events that affect people's lives... these are universal."
Fight for Your Dreams
"You've got to go, 'No, I can't come into work on the weekends—[that's] when I work on my novel.' ... People deserve those dreams, and they have to fight for them. You don't want to be at the end of your life and go, 'I met all the obligations people had for me.'"