“This is not a science. We’re not making porcelain. We’re not out cutting two-by-fours. It’s kind of crazy stuff just to sit in a room and click away at a–in my case, if you’ll forgive me, a Mac–for eight or nine hours. It is a very unnatural thing to do. And there’s no one there to tell you whether what you’re doing is right or wrong. It’s a very scary thing, to spend a year or so doing that. And the real fear is that you’ll look back and say, ‘Gee I’ve wasted a year doing nothing.’ So in the midst of that loneliness to have another writer say ‘You know, you did all right,’ is a great thing.”
–Lee Stringer (with Kurt Vonnegut), Like Shaking Hands With God: A Conversation About Writing