You Are the Freest of All Artists

The process of writing a novel is getting to know more about the novel until you know everything about it. And it’s been described as a kind of dreamlike state where you’re letting the novel make its own shape, and you’re putting into it the pleasure of creation, which is intoxicating. You can do absolutely anything; you are the freest of all artists. You’re not confined by a square on the wall or musical scales or the disciplines of verse, and you’re certainly freer than a film-maker who is dependent on the weather when he goes out to make his world. And it’s completely uncollaborative – you don’t have actors; producers; money pressures of any kind. It’s that freedom that is frightening in the end. So you have all that pleasure, but what you’ve also got to put into it – and you can’t do this consciously; it just demands it of you – you’ve got to put anxiety into it.

MARTIN AMIS