Pierce The Veil

. Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear. Most readers, of course, wouldn't be able to tell you that they respond to those . . . words because they are soothing and symmetrical, but most readers register the fact unconsciously. You could probably say that meaning is the force we employ, and music is the seduction.
. Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest , will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write. It's one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, in your mind it's transcendent, it's brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic. It contains everything you know and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire. At one point we have a writer in a room, struggling to approximate the impossible vision that hovers over his head. He finishes it, with misgivings. One of the consolations of writing books is the seemingly unquenchable conviction that next book book will be better, will be bigger and bolder and more comprehensive and true to the lives we live. We exist in a condition of hope. We love the beauty and truth that come to us, and we do our best to tamp down our doubts and disappointments. We are on a quest, and are not discouraged by our collective suspicion that the perfection we look for in art is about as likely to turn up as is the Holy Grail. That is one of the reasons we, I mean we humans, are not only the creators, translators and consumers of literature, but also its subjects. [from an essay by Michael Cunningham in the New York Times dated October 3, 2010]

An Image