A Friend Talks Process

Over at More Intelligent Life, two friends of mine have a chat, as Emily Bobrow talks to Jon Fasman. Jon's second novel, The Unpossessed City, was recently named a finalist for the prestigious Young Lions Fiction Award. During the conversation, Jon says that he recently shelved 250 pages of a third novel that was in progress, and I think he describes well a mixture of frustration and hope that is universal among writers:

I think I can appreciate all of it as part of a larger learning process, because--economic realities aside--that's what novel-writing is. That doesn't mean I don't get frustrated, or worried, of course, but there is far more to learn from failure than success. Every book is perfect in my mind and a failure on the page; this one just happened to fail earlier and for more obvious reasons. I hope that every book is a slightly better failure than the last, but I can't see ever reaching a point where I bang something out and think I've hit all my marks.