We are big fans of Junot Diaz, whose novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was so original, we didn’t want to give it away (as we usually do with fiction we’ve read); we knew we’d go back to it to dive back into its wild language.

With the release of Diaz’ latest book This Is How You Lose Her,  Sam Anderson of the New York Times interviewed Diaz about his writing process. Diaz describes his “creative metabolism” as being  SLOW and painful — he often throws out whole hunks of work he’s slaved over — and admires writers who seem to write both quickly and well. Since we consider ourselves SLOW compared to the “real” world in all sorts of ways— and know a lot of people who feel the same way about themselves — we found Diaz’ words  heartening:

The thing is, you try your best, and what else you got? You try your best, really, that’s all you can do. And for me, my best happens really so rarely. I was so always heartened by people like Michael Chabon who write so well and seem to write so fast. Edwidge Danticat writes really well and really fast. I was always heartened by them. I keep thinking one day it’ll happen. It might.

Now we’re going to check out our free sample first chapter of This Is How You Lose Her

Related posts: t.s. eliot on the creative process
how to slow down, via leo widrich and bill murray
isamu noguchi’s creative process
the role of magic in the creative processx

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