"A kind of low-level bottom-feeding life in a parallel world of your own invention"

Writing novels is an exciting and challenging and somewhat surreal job whose cyclical nature causes an enforced manic-depression. After months or years of interior, self-doubting, tunnel-visioned, antisocial, obsessive labor, a kind of low-level bottom-feeding life in a parallel world of your own invention, comes the bright light of publication, if you’re lucky. The world seizes your book, if you’re lucky, and sometimes ignores it completely or turns it into something you might not have intended it to be. You trundle along in its wake, trying to be articulate in interviews. It’s all very exhilarating and daunting.

                             ~Kate Christensen, winner of the PEN/Faulkner award