The Happiest I Have Ever Been Is

You Can Go On Like This For A Very Long Time, And No One Will Notice. You Keep Thinking You're Going To Hit Some Sort Of Bottom, But I'm Here To Tell You: There Is No Bottom.

I Usually Have More Than One Thing I'm Working On At Once -- I've Been Working On Three Different Novels. When I Get Stuck On One, I Hop Back And Forth. It's Sort Of Freeing: I Can Say I'm Abandoning This Thing That I Hate Forever And I'm Moving On To Something That's Good. I'll Find That I'll Go Back To [the Other Project] In A Day Or A Week And Like It Again. But That Moment Of Wanting To Trash Something -- That Virginia Woolf Moment When You Have To Be Stopped From Filling Your Pocket With Stones -- Comes Pretty Regularly For Me. Switching Is Probably A Good Thing.

I Think At A Certain Point The Book Develops A Certain Weight, Or Pressure. You've Been Pushing The Rock Up The Hill For A Long Time And Then It Starts To Roll And Things Do Start To Come Together In The Last Two Thirds.

There's A Lot Of Effort Expended Once You Begin To Completely Trash Your Life. Sometimes, Writing Feels Like This To Me.

The Happiest I Have Ever Been Is In The Life That I Led With My Wife And Kids.