It wasn’t until week five of writing my novel that I had a good day. By then I had discovered a few things: that I was a poor writer, and not just a poor writer but a worthless person, and not just a worthless person but a despicable one. I discovered these things several times every day, always in that order. My work rang false, I learned, because I had nothing to say, and I had nothing to say because I had little interest in actually writing, only in being a writer. I wanted to be a writer because I was vain, attention-starved, and at the core of me was a black hole where a soul ought to be.
