That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.
The relationship between reader and characters is very difficult. It is even more peculiar than the relationship between the writer and his characters.
What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other.
You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that.
