February 5, 2017

I’ve been struggling lately with how to have hope and faith for the future, when so much of life is immensely uncertain. Today, when I sat down to work on my new novel, I was bluntly reminded that writing—my most familiar, most maddening, and most constant companion—is itself a tremendous act of faith. I am ten pages into this book. It will be years before it’s complete. What I write today, I will either toss out or rewrite until it’s unrecognizable. I may die before I ever finish the book. But I still write. I sit down, and I write, whether I’m typing merrily along (rare), melting onto the floor (not as rare), or striding somewhere in between. I write because, if I don’t start, I will never get to the end, and I have been writing long enough now to know that it is not the finished product, but this—every incremental, outlandish, and wild act of faith—that makes a story.