This is one of those essays that keeps me going on those days when I'm absolutely convinced that my manuscript will never come together in any publishable form. Dalton's Heaven Lake, the story of a Christian missionary to Taiwan who undergoes some pretty severe life shifts (and a dramatic journey to China's far west), is worth a read itself. I found it back in 2005 on a Barnes and Nobel featured table, and being only a year out from my own time as an American college grad in China, reading it was like coming home to that time when I was horribly displaced from home.
As a writer, Dalton's essay is a homecoming of a different sort. It's comforting, as I finish out year six of writing my own book over and over, to know that someone else has been in this situation, that there might actually be something beyond the limited view of the horizon that I have now.
Particularly apt:
"Acquaintances are often startled when I tell them it took eight years to write my first novel. Writers barely lift an eyebrow. Some beginning authors write two or three books before they’re able to publish. Others, like myself, write the same book over and over."