"I am a very linear thinker, so I write beginning to end. I write hundreds of pages per book that never make it into print"
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Linear thinking gets framed as a limitation in an age that fetishizes “process” and post-it-note storytelling, but Hamilton flips it into a kind of private superpower. “I write beginning to end” sounds almost stubbornly old-school, a declaration of faith in momentum: you don’t puzzle-box a narrative into place, you follow it, scene by scene, until it tells you what it is. For a prolific genre novelist, that’s not just temperament; it’s infrastructure. It’s how you ship books in a marketplace that rewards consistency and punishes dithering.
The real tell is the second sentence: “hundreds of pages… never make it into print.” That’s a subtle correction to the myth of the effortless commercial writer. Hamilton’s intent is to legitimize the invisible labor behind a readable novel, especially in genres where critics love to assume speed equals shallowness. The subtext is craft-by-attrition: she drafts past the point of usefulness, not because she can’t control the story, but because she’s building a world sturdy enough to cut from. Those dead pages are research, rehearsal, and emotional calibration.
Context matters here, too. Hamilton writes long-running series with devoted readers who notice continuity, character drift, tonal shifts. The discarded pages function like a hidden quality-control layer. She’s not confessing waste; she’s describing a method where excess is the price of narrative certainty. In a culture that wants art to look like inspiration, she insists it looks like deletion.
The real tell is the second sentence: “hundreds of pages… never make it into print.” That’s a subtle correction to the myth of the effortless commercial writer. Hamilton’s intent is to legitimize the invisible labor behind a readable novel, especially in genres where critics love to assume speed equals shallowness. The subtext is craft-by-attrition: she drafts past the point of usefulness, not because she can’t control the story, but because she’s building a world sturdy enough to cut from. Those dead pages are research, rehearsal, and emotional calibration.
Context matters here, too. Hamilton writes long-running series with devoted readers who notice continuity, character drift, tonal shifts. The discarded pages function like a hidden quality-control layer. She’s not confessing waste; she’s describing a method where excess is the price of narrative certainty. In a culture that wants art to look like inspiration, she insists it looks like deletion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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