Shiraz Janjua

Jonathan Lethem talks about his new book Chronic City with the LA Times (book excerpt in The New Yorker from a few months’ back). I didn’t read the whole interview, which is about a book I’ve not yet read but may later, but I did read and enjoy this paragraph:

Writing every day is my only important form of – I always hate the word “discipline,” I try to get around it. “Habituation” is much more how it feels to me. I love to dwell in the space of a novel — I don’t find writing uncomfortable, it’s something I really love doing. Writing a long novel, especially, it means that I’m creating this whole other set of people that I’m interested in, and this whole other world I get to go into, and I try to stay there. I try to go every day, not just to see the word count amass, which is helpful, but because then my subconscious is kind of living there. If I write every day, even if it’s just a tiny bit – sometimes it will be just a tiny bit, I’ll work for 45 minutes and just check in with it – then I never stop, I’m always immersed. That seems to me to be the best way to do things. Then your unconscious process begins collecting happy accidents, everything seems to be relevant to what you’re working on, because your brain is just harvesting language and incidents and images on its own. There was one period at the peak with “Chronic City” where I worked on this book without missing a day for over seven months. I always feel very smug about those kind of runs when I get on them. I’m not that fast a writer, so I have to be there every day to write a long book quickly at all. I don’t count words or pages. If I get a great paragraph, or I get two pages – two pages is a great day. I think of that as a real success. But I try not to trouble myself if I don’t do so much – as long as I’m working, I’m satisfied.