I spent most of Sunday typing up and revising reams of first draft I wrote when I was away on holiday, getting more and more depressed at how rubbish my initial draft was.

Then in the evening I read Alice Munro's Paris Review interview and the following leapt out at me, making me feel a million times better:

"I have stacks of notebooks that contain this terribly clumsy writing, which is just getting anything down. I often wonder, when I look at these first drafts, if there was any point in doing this at all. I’m the opposite of a writer with a quick gift, you know, someone who gets it piped in. I don’t grasp it very readily at all, the “it” being whatever I’m trying to do. I often get on the wrong track and have to haul myself back."

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1791/the-art-of-fiction-no-137-alice-munro


This is exactly why I love the Paris Review interviews so much - it's unbelievably encouraging to know that even literary geniuses suffer the same feelings of inadequacy as the rest of us!

Oh, isn't that cheering. I adore Alice Munro, too.

And yes to the Paris Review! A goldmine.

Excellent - I've just discovered a massive "idiot in the attic" error at the final big scene in the almost-complete first draft of my thriller (i.e. my protags are suddenly risking all for no reason, c.f. classic idiot who goes up into the attic in the empty house to find out what's making that strange noise).

Always reassuring to hear about someone else stuffing something up.

Toast, do you know Turkey City Lexicon?

http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/

If you've not met it before, just make sure you're not drinking coffee...

Toast, do you know Turkey City Lexicon? http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/ If you've not met it before, just make sure you're not drinking coffee...

Oh wow, this is great! Particularly like the Squid on the Mantelpiece and the Jar of Tang.

At least those are two things that aren't going to go wrong in my thriller but I certainly recognise them from my days of reading SF.