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STAR LETTER
Gripes and sloth
‘I am sure of one thing – it isn’t the great book I had hoped it would be. It’s just a run-of-the-mill book. And the awful thing is that it’s absolutely the best I can do.’
So wrote John Steinbeck in his journal upon completing the first hand written draft of his multi-prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath.
The journal describes a panoply of emotions – from the sheer enjoyment of ‘meeting and respecting’ his characters to the frustrations of slogging away at his 2,000 words-a-day plan all the while being besieged by: hammering neighbours, a regular stream of delightful house guests, getting drunk, slipped deadlines, ‘losing it completely’, laziness (‘My laziness is overwhelming. My will is low. I must build my will again’) the beginning of war, purchasing and moving to a large ranch, and inadequacy (‘I’m tired of the struggle that this miserable success has brought against me. I don’t know whether I could write a decent book now. That is the greatest fear of all’)
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