I’m learning a lot about writing and a significant amount about myself. I’ll share some of the former and very little of the latter because I was raised in culture that considers it indecent to expose yourself in public.

I learned that I have a lot to learn and that this learning has to be done by doing, not by studying. I also learned that discipline is crucial. The discipline that makes you write, re-write, kill darlings, listen to your editor and keep going. You need discipline because writing is about effort and it’s amazing how much effort it takes.

I’ll compare writing a novel to climbing a mountain.

There’s the mountain. You climb it one step at a time - maybe a hundred thousand steps or more. You plan your ascent knowing that each step has to be questioned and accurately placed and that the price of failure ranges from insignificant to crucial. The task is exhausting and you have to find resources to continue when you are in despair and wondering why the hell you ever started. Finally, when you’re done and have returned to base, the mountain is still there and all you have is a record of the journey.

There’s a shared question too; ‘why do this extraordinary thing?’. The answer is simple yet unexplainable - we do these things for ourselves. What other people think about our achievement is entirely disconnected from the motivation because there isn’t anyone’s opinion worth suffering for except our own.