With Windup Girl, I felt ashamed all the time. I felt ashamed while I was writing it, I felt ashamed that I had written it, I felt ashamed that I was inflicting it on other people, and now I feel ashamed when people criticize it.It’s interesting because I feel like that’s the book where I took lots of risks. I mean, I pretty much took every risk I possibly could in The Windup Girl. So when you’re taking lots of risks, you know, your failure opportunities are big. You’ve huge failure opportunities. I suppose that’s the thing that made it good in other people’s eyes was that it was risky—I mean, it was as big and as ambitious as I could make it, whether it was setting it in a foreign country where I needed to do so much research, whether it was having so many characters on the page or whether it was just being so unapologetic about the violence in it or what. It was all risky. And so you feel exposed. I think with Ship Breaker there’s actually very little that’s truly risky about it—the only layer that’s really risky is some of the violence and nobody cares about violence against meth-addicted men, so it’s pretty safe territory really.I’ve never really had a lot of confidence in the things that I’ve worked on.
I think that might be why I like writing at night -- my suspension of disbelief is strongest then.
scrivnomancy
That's very interesting to read. I think the most precarious strand of suspension of disbelief a writer has to conquer is his/her own. You have to subscribe to this really fanciful belief that you have something worth hearing or reading.
There needs to be a SCRIVNOMANCER club. And when there is, I want in.
I think we can work pointy hats into this.