Book Deals

OK, so it sounds like getting a book deal, quiting work, and living the writer's life is pretty much the same as living the regular old working, 9-5 writer's life. For example.

“I found, when I quit The Times, that the biggest problem is loneliness,” Mr. Anderson admitted.

“Basically, I was giving myself panic attacks in the beginning,” said Ms. McLaren, who took a leave of absence from her column-writing job to move to an isolated farmhouse outside Toronto and write her novel in solitude. “As a newspaper writer, people were always walking over to your desk and being like, ‘Where is it? How’s it coming?’ All that was taken away—there’s no deadline.”

And then there’s the self-loathing.

“You’re not letting people read it as you write it. Nobody has ever read what you’re doing. It could be terrible. It could be brilliant. And you start to think, ‘Oh God, this is a complete piece of shit that couldn’t be published—nobody is going to read it.’ But then you have a sandwich and go, ‘I am a genius and I’m going to win the Booker Prize.’”

Or at least get a link from a cool blog. But then you write the thing, publish it, a few people read it, some like it, some don't, and by then you only sort of care cause, whatamigonnawriteaboutnext? No. For REAL. WHAT?

That said, I'll still take a book deal from anyone who's got an extra one laying around.