'The only thing you really need,' I tell these people, 'is the talent of the room. Unless you have that, your other talents are worthless.'
Writing is something you do alone in a room. Copy that sentence and put it on your wall because there's no way to exaggerate or overemphasize this fact. It's the most important thing to remember if you want to be a writer. Writing is something you do alone in a room.
Before any issues of style, content, or form can be addressed, the fundamental questions are: How long can you stay in that room? How many hours a day? How do you behave in that room? How often can you go back to it? How much fear (and, for that matter, how much elation) can you endure by yourself? How many years - how many years - can you remain alone in a room?"
I don't think Ventura means for us to take him literally about being in a "room," although he might. For me, it's about the tolerance to live with a writing project, to spend time with it not only in a room typing it out but elsewhere and everywhere. I sometimes think I write short and very short fiction because I've not yet found a way to manage the anxiety and doubt associated with writing something over months and possibly years. Even the short stories I've written and published seemed to have been mainly composed in a manic burst of writing. Seven pages is my tolerance level for the novel. I have about a dozen or so 7-page novel openings. So here's my Wednesday Therapy Plan: I am going to build tolerance by spending more and more time with the same story, the same piece of writing, even if it means sitting there staring at it, day after day, until the desire to write overcomes the desire to avoid.
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