"Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you're writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one"
About this Quote
Bernard Cornwell captures the whiplash cadence of professional authorship. Drafting has its own momentum: a writer builds a world, tunes to its voice, and lives inside its rhythms. Then the galley proofs arrive, those typeset pages that need final corrections before publication, and the energy shifts from discovery to repair. The verb choice matters. To wrench attention is to force it against its grain, to tear oneself from the forward pull of the new and re-enter the fixed past of the old.
That wrenching is not only logistical but psychological. By the time galleys appear, months may have passed since the manuscript was finished. The author has become a slightly different writer, with new preoccupations and a fresh cadence born of the next book. Remembering what you were thinking is not trivial nostalgia; it is an act of reconstruction, a return to the mindset that generated the previous voice, pacing, and choices. One must honor intentions that no longer feel instinctive, preserving continuity for readers who will encounter the text as a seamless present.
Cornwell speaks from the vantage of a prolific novelist who often works in series, where immersion is everything. Each book inhabits a specific world with its own moral weather and diction. Switching between those worlds on a production schedule exposes the industrial reality beneath the romance of inspiration. The creative life is not a single blaze of vision but an alternation of modes: improvisation, then audit; invention, then scrutiny. The publishing machine imposes cycles that run out of phase with the writer’s inner tempo.
There is, however, a hidden gift in the delay. Distance can clarify. What was once a tangle of intentions can be seen more coolly, and the final pass can rescue the book from its creator’s blind spots. Still, the tension remains: the living current of the new against the hardened shape of the almost-finished. Professionalism is the art of moving between these currents without losing either.
That wrenching is not only logistical but psychological. By the time galleys appear, months may have passed since the manuscript was finished. The author has become a slightly different writer, with new preoccupations and a fresh cadence born of the next book. Remembering what you were thinking is not trivial nostalgia; it is an act of reconstruction, a return to the mindset that generated the previous voice, pacing, and choices. One must honor intentions that no longer feel instinctive, preserving continuity for readers who will encounter the text as a seamless present.
Cornwell speaks from the vantage of a prolific novelist who often works in series, where immersion is everything. Each book inhabits a specific world with its own moral weather and diction. Switching between those worlds on a production schedule exposes the industrial reality beneath the romance of inspiration. The creative life is not a single blaze of vision but an alternation of modes: improvisation, then audit; invention, then scrutiny. The publishing machine imposes cycles that run out of phase with the writer’s inner tempo.
There is, however, a hidden gift in the delay. Distance can clarify. What was once a tangle of intentions can be seen more coolly, and the final pass can rescue the book from its creator’s blind spots. Still, the tension remains: the living current of the new against the hardened shape of the almost-finished. Professionalism is the art of moving between these currents without losing either.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|
More Quotes by Bernard
Add to List
