While a fascinating and inspiring insight into the thoughts and habits of the writers, I must confess to one disappointment. What the hell is Robert Caro doing away from his desk, and not continuing his writing the fourth volume of his "Years of Lyndon Johnson"! While I wait patiently, I don't want to see Mr Caro away from his desk in future until I have Volume Four in my hands.
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ANNETTE GORDON-REED: I never felt that, though.
ANDERSEN: Really? It's always pleasurable?
GORDON-REED: Hell is endnotes. Endnotes in order are hell. But writing stuff doesn't feel like hell to me.
STROUT: It feels difficult to me a lot. Which doesn't mean I don't love it and I'm not pulled to it on a daily, nightly, insomniac basis. Your point about it being very hard work is a good one. It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard. It's a job of tremendous anxiety for me.
ORLEAN: There's also this new question, which is, will anyone buy this? Will someone pay for this? Will the magazine I'm working for go out of business? I don't know anyone no matter how successful they are—beside, you know, J. K. Rowling and what's-her-face who does the Twilight stuff—but I think the realities of the industry are present. I think you'd be foolish not to be at least aware of it. Maybe not suffering from it, but conscious of it.
BLOCK: I suppose you have to be, in the sense that you're professional. But I think the less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do. The enormous mistake a lot of young writers make is that they want to know what people want.
ANDERSEN: The problem is, any time you try to game it in that way and then it doesn't work, then you feel like a complete schmo.
BLOCK: Yes, absolutely.
ANDERSEN: You sold out and nobody's bought.
BLOCK: Absolutely. If you set out to please yourself, then maybe you will.
GORDON-REED: It's sort of a luxury, being an academic. Because I have tenure. I have a job unless something catastrophic happens.
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