From the Feature "Battles and Browne Talk Writing" at the Backspace Discussion Forums. Reprinted by permission

A friend of mine had a house built on the side of a hill in the Pacific Northwest. Beautiful view. At night, he'd stand on his deck and look out at the valley spilling out below him, moonlight reflected on the surface of the ocean beyond. The house itself was a marvel of wood and glass and filled with just about any convenience you can think of, fully automated by a mainframe computer. People who visited usually stood around wide-eyed and slack-jawed, completely amazed by the place. It was that impressive.

A few months after he moved in, my friend was walking barefoot across his carpet when he noticed an odd bump in the floor. He explored it with his toes, then crouched down and ran his hands along the bump. Alarmed, he pulled the carpet back and felt his stomach clutch up when he discovered a crack in the foundation that ran the entire width of the house – a crack that literally split the place in half.

Last winter, I hit a bump. A big bump. I forgot why I write.

Here’s the relevant backstory. I wrote seven novels over twelve years before I found an agent. It was nearly fourteen years before I eventually sold a book. What I want to write about today is what I possess, and what many of you possess, that makes us continue writing and investing ourselves for such long stretches of time without the so-called ‘success’ of publication.

This winter, when I came down to my office day after day with a big empty nothing where the novelist in me used to be, unable to pinpoint why I even have an office, I considered these things. How did I get here? Why did I want this so much? And how do I get it back?