"A novel is often a longer process in handling self-doubt"
About this Quote
Writing a novel, Robert Sheckley suggests, isn’t primarily an act of inspiration so much as an extended negotiation with your own insecurity. The sly move in his line is the redefinition of “process”: not drafting chapters, not structuring plot, but “handling self-doubt” the way you’d handle a volatile substance. That verb matters. You don’t conquer doubt; you manage it, contain it, move it from one room to another so you can keep working.
Sheckley, a science fiction writer with a satirist’s eye, understood systems that misbehave and humans who rationalize their way through the malfunction. The quote reads like a deadpan mission report from inside the creative psyche: the novel is less a heroic quest than a long-term maintenance job. Its comedy is quiet but cutting. If the novel is “often” this, then the romantic myth of the confident author channeling genius is, at best, a rare weather event.
The subtext is also about scale. Short forms can be dashed off between panic attacks; a novel forces you to live with your uncertainties for months or years. Self-doubt isn’t a pre-writing hurdle, it’s a companion you keep feeding with every bad paragraph and every imagined reviewer. Yet the line refuses melodrama. By framing doubt as part of the workflow, Sheckley gives a kind of permission: if you’re anxious, you’re not failing, you’re doing the job. The endurance test is the point.
Sheckley, a science fiction writer with a satirist’s eye, understood systems that misbehave and humans who rationalize their way through the malfunction. The quote reads like a deadpan mission report from inside the creative psyche: the novel is less a heroic quest than a long-term maintenance job. Its comedy is quiet but cutting. If the novel is “often” this, then the romantic myth of the confident author channeling genius is, at best, a rare weather event.
The subtext is also about scale. Short forms can be dashed off between panic attacks; a novel forces you to live with your uncertainties for months or years. Self-doubt isn’t a pre-writing hurdle, it’s a companion you keep feeding with every bad paragraph and every imagined reviewer. Yet the line refuses melodrama. By framing doubt as part of the workflow, Sheckley gives a kind of permission: if you’re anxious, you’re not failing, you’re doing the job. The endurance test is the point.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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