George Orwell once noted that Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.
The book did not feel completely finished until the manuscript went to the printer. Up until that moment there was still a chance that something might go wrong, or bits would need to be changed, and in fact there was a last-minute edit that was crucial.
Now it is absolutely true: the project is done. Tension that has existed, in variable doses of grim determination, for nearly five years – is finished. I didn’t know what I would think; completing such a long piece of work could have rendered me anxious and slightly paranoid. But I don’t have any thoughts about the thing. I just feel limp and ragged, like surfacing after a bout of food poisoning.
Of course the start of that Orwell quote is: All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.
Looking over the galleys, I really do not know why I wrote the book. I’m not being disingenuous when I say it just sort of. . . happened.