“It’s even possible that there’s something retrospective in the nature of writing itself. Probably every writer’s first piece of writing, if it were possible to excavate such a thing, would be found to look backward. Writing tries to fix the past—to hold it in place and sometimes in imagination to improve it.”
Author Caleb Crain reflects on the difficulties of letting go of a novel. While breaking down Samuel Daniel’s poem “To the Reader,” Crain mulls over the process of revision, the “hazards of exposure,” and finding comfort in errors.
(Via The Millions)
