Subject: Michener3 From: Fred Zimmerman To: fzimmerm Michener, My Lost Mexico, 53 "Writing a novel is a perilous undertaking. To get it started is fairly easy, but to retain emotional, intellectual, and psychological control as the chapters unfold is a demanding task. In the middle of the effort, doubts and confusion often arise and both confidence and forward motion are arrested and sometimes mortally wounded. Three times in my life I have stopped writing in midstream and subsequently abandoned the novel. ... [I did not] take refuge in the popular phrase 'writer's block', for I have known that the fault lay not in some delicate psychological quirk in my mind, but, rather, in the bald brutal consequence of my having lost control of the great enterprise. When asked about the demise of my grand hopes I have invariably said: 'It lost forward motion.' My careful use of the impersonal 'It' betrays the fact that I was loath to blame myself for the disaster. Some outside agency was at fault. Actually, of course, the blockage was caused by my inability to keep the diverse strands in order, and especially to keep the ultimate target in sight and the channels to it clean and clearly defined."