Getting your foot in the door with some publishing people can be important when you're starting out as a writer, but it's also not enough to get you where you need to be. Chad Harbach More Quotes by Chad Harbach More Quotes From Chad Harbach Writers have the purity of their art and what they want to achieve with that, and that this purity is bound up with the messy material conditions of trying to make a living while doing that work. Chad Harbach want trying art I tended to write the book in these bursts of two or three months at a time. So I would know, or at least feel securely, that for the next few months I was at least going to have a few hours a day. Chad Harbach writing two book Most writers, most books, you have no idea whether it was a dollar or a million dollars. Chad Harbach dollars book ideas It's very hard right now to be a pro sports fan. The economics of this stuff is abysmal. Chad Harbach fans stuff sports You don't have to even see the common man anymore if you don't want to! Only through the telescope on your yacht. Chad Harbach telescopes want men Looking at and shaping your own work is a very intuitive process. You see something you've written in your notebook. It's there on the page and either feels right or it doesn't, and it's hard sometimes to go beyond that and discover why it feels that way. Chad Harbach notebook pages way The idea of the writer who writes nineteen novels, with various ups and downs and levels of experimentation, isn't around so much now. There's a focus, I think, on fewer books, with more pressure on each book to succeed. With that there comes, I think, a certain pressure towards shapeliness in fiction. Towards neatness. And I think writers feel that, and it can effect how they write. Chad Harbach writing book thinking The challenge for any fiction writer is that your job involves simply sitting at a desk for a very, very long time. Chad Harbach challenges jobs long I sold a book six years after I left an MFA program. In between, there was a lot of endurance of poverty and a lot of fighting off doubt. It's all a part of the process of being or becoming a writer. Chad Harbach fighting book years A lot of my close friends had tolerantly washed their hands of the whole idea of me writing a book. They had said to themselves, "I don't know what he's doing." Chad Harbach writing book hands I'm just kind of really interested in athletes as artists of a pretty serious variety and people who devote themselves to what they do in a really incredible way. Chad Harbach artist athlete people It's quite a feeling to finish something you have been 10 years beholden to and to have a clean slate. Chad Harbach finish something feeling you I feel like every time I start up, it's like a truck you have to get into 15th gear, so you very solely crank into that mental space where you feel really immersed in the world of the book and then you can just kind of go. But there's just that few days of frustration to get to that point. Chad Harbach feel you time world I think people have the wrong idea of 'Moby Dick' as this somber, boring thing. Chad Harbach wrong think boring people I was a ballplayer, but only for a limited time. I grew up playing in Wisconsin. It's a very sports-centric part of the country that I grew up in and I played a lot of sports, but baseball first and foremost. I played through high school. I was a middle-infielder. Chad Harbach high-school time sports school I've earned my living in all sorts of terrible ways - as a janitor, a copy editor, a psychotherapist. Chad Harbach copy earned living terrible There's certainly a large literature around baseball in the U.S. Chad Harbach large around baseball literature American history and the history of baseball are bound up together: our racial politics can be described and traced through it. Chad Harbach politics baseball together history When I write for 'n+1,' I begin by doing a lot of reading, to try to convince myself I'm not stupid. Then I scribble down a paragraph here, a paragraph there, when a notion strikes. Then I see if I can arrange those notions in a way that yields an argument. Chad Harbach myself reading stupid way I've been a Brewers fan since birth. Chad Harbach since fan been birth
