The real talent might be the talent for practice itself.

I forget who said this, but I believe it is really accurate. The difficult thing in writing a book, the truly difficult thing, is not to give up before it's as good as you can make it.
So I've been writing this book for 10 months. For ten months, I have never been away from it for more than a week (and that was only when I went on holiday without my computer). I have sat, at my desk in my bedroom, at the table in the living room, writing, writing, writing. I have written some very bad stuff and winced, and some things that excited me as I went forward thinking I was writing something truly great. I have laughed at my own jokes and cried at my own sad story lines. I have argued with my husband over the book. I have deleted pages I hated and pages that I liked. I have cut huge versions into nearly huge versions. I have wondered, a million times a day, whether the book is any good. I have wondered whether any publisher will touch it. I have wondered how I can tell whether my own writing is good. I have wondered whether to get a real job and browsed on the Internet. And I have grown impatient with this task, that seemingly, has no end. But after all, I'm still here, and if I find the strength again today, I will sit at my computer, as I do the overwhelming majority of weekdays, to write some more.

To keep going is difficult, but not as difficult as it would be to stop.

Sylvia