Becoming a Writer By Junot Diaz
From Oprah website, http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Junot-Diaz-Talks-About-What-Made-Him-Become-a-Writer
Photo: Nancy Crampton
"It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every
day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M.,
would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed,
on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I
could. But none of it worked. My novel, which I had started with such
hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge
past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of
sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn't
been pretty damn cool. But they were cool, showed a lot of promise.
Would also have been fine if I could have just jumped to something else.
But I couldn't. All the other novels I tried sucked worse than the
stalled one, and even more disturbing, I seemed to have lost the ability
to write short stories. It was like I had somehow slipped into a
No-Writing Twilight Zone and I couldn't find an exit. Like I'd been
chained to the sinking ship of those 75 pages and there was no key and
no patching the hole in the hull. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, but
nothing I produced was worth a damn.
Want to talk about stubborn? I kept at it for five straight
years. Five damn years. Every day failing for five years?..."
(follow link above to read more.)
Junot Díaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
(Riverhead) won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.
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