The odds that your first novel will ever be published may not be great, but some new writers do manage to get published. NPR Books asks Chad Harbach and Tara Conklin about the process of writing and selling their first novels. About The Art of Fielding, which took Harbach ten years to write, he says:
What kept me going, I suppose, was that I always really loved the idea of the book as it was being elaborated in my head, even if what I was writing down kept falling way short of the mark. And at a certain point, you’re just priced into the project – you’ve invested so much time and emotion that it seems even stupider to stop than to keep going.
