Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them scribbling are really just guessing. A profound, unmet childish need to be acknowledged? Maybe. It hardly matters, though. The termite that asks itself why it keeps chewing risks becoming sluggish and inefficient, as does the writer who grows self-conscious in the middle of chapter five.

My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer... Being a critic wasn't an aspiration of mine.

Stopping to think is fine for characters, but not for their creators. They have to work.

Walter Kirn Quotes