I want to share something extraordinary with you. Yes, it’s another interview, and no, I don’t think it’s extraordinary because it’s an interview with me. It’s extraordinary because of the sheer amount of effort the interviewer put into the piece.

This is an interview with writer Robert McGuire. Robert is a CT-based writer and a member of one of my writers’ groups. He is one of the most thoughtful and disciplined writers I have ever met. His blog Working on A Novel, is based on Journal of a Novel, the diary of John Steinbeck kept while he was working on East of Eden. According to Robert, that journal contained Steinbeck’s daily musings about technical problems in his draft, personal family dramas that were affecting his writing and his daily page count.” Robert, who is working on his own epic American novel, does the same on his blog.

His posts are a must-read for people who are writing novels, or who are interested to what the process of a very disciplined and thorough artist looks like.

This interview was no less thorough. It took a week a do over email, and the questions made me rethink my writing process. It is also the closest I may ever come to being the subject of a Paris Review interview. Interestingly enough, Steinbeck was scheduled for a Paris Review interview himself. He was too sick to do the interview, as it came late in his life, so his interview in the Paris Review interview archives is taken, partially, from his letters in Journal of a Novel.