My remaining space permits just one, however. Rather, writing a book is about passion. Few editors would have gone for a queer book about a little-known murder in Savannah that took its sweet time describing every other quirk of the city and its inhabitants before addressing the crime. Whatever John Berendt was thinking when he set out to write Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil , it couldn't have been the bestseller list . . . . Clearly, he was born to write this book, and he worked through whatever ambivalence and uncertainty he might have felt within himself or encountered from others.
Most writers have very little choice in what they write about.
Think of any writer's body of work, and you will see the thematic pattern incorporating voice, structure, and intent. What is in evidence over and over is a certain set of obsessions, a certain vocabulary, a way of approaching the page. The person who can't focus is not without his own obsessions, vocabulary, and approach. However, either he can't find his form or he can't apply the necessary discipline that ultimately separates the published from the unpublished. He is currently writing a biography of Ida Tarbell.