This isn’t something I worry about anymore, which means I’m much more disciplined and ruthless. The premise underpinning all of my writing now is that finishing a book is basically something I can sort of do, and this is, in a lot of ways, hugely helpful. On the other hand, I think there can be a unique authenticity in the sloppily exuberant outburst of a first book—and, like a lot of things about my twenties, writing that way is something I’ll miss.

 

RY: It strikes me that there’s a nice parallel between Irina’s search for meaning and the writer’s search for meaning. You say writing must be its own consolation, and so then the question becomes from where does the writer generate meaning if she is never published or read? What is the thing that propels the writer even when the task might seem utterly futile? What is the intrinsic value in writing or art making? (Are these questions that you grapple with at all while writing?)

 

JD: I don’t really know what the intrinsic value or meaning of writing is, but then again I think if you start to really scrutinize a lot of things that are commonly thought meaningful in life—friendships, family, sex, religion, hobbies, the acquisition of any knowledge that’s not directly related to survival—you just kind of wind up with the conclusion that something is meaningful if it feels meaningful. And writing itself—regardless of publication or readership—does seem to feel meaningful to a lot of people, myself included, for whatever reason.

 

It’s just one of those activities in life that feels to me like an end in and of itself. I think everyone has different things that feel that way to them—things that they’d still do even if there were nothing to be gained beyond the experience of doing that thing—and I guess in a way writers’ willingness to write even though they might never be published does seem related to our general human capacity to carry on with our lives even though we’ll die, our civilizations even though the earth will crash into the sun, etc.