Now I’m going about the agonizing process of starting a new [novel]. I say “agonizing” because it takes a while for the little cluster of ideas and half-impressions to gather momentum, acquire critical mass, whatever, so for the first few months it seems like you’re clutching at straws. One good side-effect of this is that it makes your last book seem (by comparison) like a masterpiece. It’d be good if you could just jump the present one and go on to the next, so that the present one would be conferred masterpiece status retroactively before it was even begun; then it’d be easier to write.

~ Tom McCarthy

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