Writing a Novel Is Tough, Really Tough!

Writing a novel is a tough, difficult job. Apart from plotting there are the characterizations, the settings, the subject, the voice, the tone, the foreshadowing, the explication of ordinary things you understand but others do not, the picking up of the tempo, the organizing of the work, everything takes so much time. The most difficult part is organizing the work on your computer so that files don't get over written by the wrong versions and the one you open and edit is not the wrong one. If the latter, you undo all you have done in the past several days. I don't know why I have embarked on such a journey when I can sit back and watch television, or, spend more time on Facebook. No work needed for all this. I had committed myself to doing this and I guess I am right, if I have the will, and so on….

The market for the novel is drying up. So the last bastion of publishing (as we know it) is crumbling. Poetry is already dead, because nobody reads poetry, and publishers and literary clearly state, "We don't accept poetry," as if it is a pariah dog. If poetry – the most sacred of written arts, the most sublime of thoughts sifted through the sieve of experience – is given such shabby treatment, then what's the future of literature? Will it survive the onslaught of a mindless media – television – or a sea of irrelevant information – the Internet? I don't know the answers. Only time can suggest some answers.