Andrew Roe

“Early on, I was very scared about whether or not I was good enough. I’d been a writer for a very long time, but also, not really. The thing is, I had tried, but not very hard. Because if you don’t try very hard, and you fail, you don’t have to feel that badly about it. I think it’s terrifying when you say, ‘I’m really committed to this,’ and you try your hardest and do your absolute best work. Then, if you fail, you don’t have anything to hide behind.”

That’s Alexi Zentner from an interview at The Millions.

The line that really haunts/stings is this one:

“Because if you don’t try very hard, and you fail, you don’t have to feel that badly about it.“

Alexi — who I met yesterday at a reading in San Diego — just published his first novel, Touch.

“So it took me a while to work up the nerve to write a novel. You need an extraordinary amount of faith I think to write one. It’s almost a religious endeavor. But I tried to keep in mind what Doctorow says about writing a novel being like driving at night in the fog: you can only see as far as your headlights. Once I resigned myself to the fact that it might be a colossal failure and that was okay, at least I’d die trying – then I managed to write one.”

Eric Puchner, from a Rumpus interview

This is a very nice list, put together by Erin Fitzgerald (thanks Erin).

It features many wonderful writers (Mel Bosworth, Roxane Gay, xTx, Kathy Fish, Ethel Rohan, Ravi Mangla and Linsday Hunter, to name a few).

Someone was kind enough to give a nod to my story “This Is What It’s Like,” which appeared in Blip a while back.

There are lots of great stories listed, but I highly, highly recommend xTx’s “Standoff.” It’ll knock your socks off, guaranteed.

I got some amazingly good news about my novel: The Sun will be publishing an excerpt. (No details on when yet.)

This is a much-needed shot in the arm. It’s a book — called Believers — that I’ve been working on for a long time (I won’t go into the details; perhaps another post), and the past year I’ve been wrestling (unsuccessfully) with the structure.

Right before I got The Sun acceptance, I finally had a breakthrough. I finally figured some shit out. And I’ve made more progress in the past few months than I have in the past few years. (Additionally, I’ve sworn off working on short stories and flash pieces.)

So there’s that, which is nice.

And also, more recently, there’s this: a very small excerpt from Believers is now up at Wigleaf. It’s called “The One You Don’t Pick.”

… can be read here.