“Writing a novel is a very hard thing to
do because it covers so long a span of time, and if you get
discouraged it is not a bad sign, but a good one. If you think you are not
doing it well, you are thinking the way real novelists do. I never knew one who
did not feel greatly discouraged at times, and some get desperate, and I have
always found that to be a good symptom."
—Maxwell Perkins
(1884-1947), Charles Scribner's Sons
(editor of F. Scott
Fitzgerald,
Ernest Hemingway, Thomas
Wolfe)