There is something mysterious about the writer’s ability, on any given day, to write.The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.It makes no difference how clumsy the sketch is-sketches are not supposed to be polished and elegant. One gets down the characters and their behaviour any way one can, knowing the sentences will have to be revised, knowing the characters’ actions may change. Fiction, like sculpture or painting, begins with a rough sketch.It is the nature of stupid people to hide their perplexity and attack what they cannot grasp.Fiction written for the wrong reason may fail to satisfy the motive behind it and thus may block the writer, as I’ve said but there is no wrong motive for writing fiction. Writer’s block comes from the feeling that one is doing the wrong thing or doing the right thing badly.We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page we begin to see images.False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurrence of one damned thing after another. In the final analysis, real suspense comes with moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices.Given the general oddity of writers, no wonder there are no sure cures. The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on.One has to be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.

John Gardner was born 21 July 1933, and died 14 September 1982.

On becoming a novelist by john gardner