theparisreview:

“It’s like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you’re making up the earth you’re going to stand on. Normally I know what I want to achieve in a chapter, and I have an idea about where events should take place and I’ll have some rough idea of the characters involved. But I might not have fully invented the place. And I certainly won’t fully know the characters. So in the first draft, I’m inventing people and place with a broad schematic idea of what’s going to happen. In the process, of course, I discover all sorts of bigger and more substantial things. Within those successive drafts, my characters keep on doing the same things over and over; it’s like some hellish repetition of events. But the reasons they do them gradually become more complex and layered and deeply rooted in the characters. Every day’s a miracle: Wow, I did that, I didn’t know any of that yesterday.”

—Peter Carey on writing

Photography Credit Mike Segar / Reuters