I was speaking to a friend recently and telling him I was going to Italy this summer with my family to work on a book there and he said, "Tell me, sometime, how one gets a lifestyle like that." I wanted to tell him that what you have to do is write for ten or twelve years not knowing if anyone else in the world will ever want to read it, and then be fortunate enough to get a book published, and have a good wife who understands your need to do that, and then be able to deal with the fact that you have about five thousand dollars' worth of bills in the in-basket, and about three thousand dollars in the bank, and you have no idea when the next dollar is coming, or where it's coming from, and you go upstairs with that worry swirling in your mind, and you sit down at a desk that has pictures of your kids on it, and you make up stories that you think will move other people ... but it didn't sound right somehow, so I just shrugged and made a joke.
For other people it's not going to a party on Saturday night and staying home and writing. For others it's looking your mom or dad in the eyes and saying you know they put you through college, and you appreciate it, but instead of going on to pharmacy school, which was their dream for you, you've decided to live in a crappy apartment someplace with your girlfriend and write a book. For others it's facing all the little madhouses inside themselves and writing about that, all the self-doubt and negative voices, all your other failures and half-successes, all the comments of the practical-minded folks you love. Or all of the above.
-- novelist Roland Murillo, in an interview in Quay Journal
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