The Writing Moment
The muses were busy. A blizzard of epiphanies stormed him. Insights about scenes, connections, story, character development, plot. Now the challenge was to hang onto them, find where they go in the book, and get them written down.
That’s always his fiction writing’s challenge. Discovering what’s to be told and telling it. Many writers agree with him: that’s the challenge. Well, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?
The Writing Moment
The best part of writing is when he’s so deeply involved with the work in progress that he goes to sleep thinking about it and awakens with it in his mind. Details inundate him in a joyous way. Reading anything, but especially fiction, is challenging. It feels like everything that he reads drives new insights about what to write.
This is also the worst thing about the writing life because all his energy and attention is directed toward his writing. Others find him unable to engage with them, making him appear absent-minded and anti-social. The truth can’t be explained. Only those wholly absorbed by what they do will understand.
Michael Seidel, writer 