Ali Smith: What do you do when you lose that faith in the writing process?

From a lithub.com interview with author Ali Smith:

Q. What do you do when you lose that faith in the writing process?

A. I think we wait. Toni Morrison said, which has rung true throughout anything I’ve ever tried: If we’re stuck, we just have to wait. That is also a form of trust.

Hope and despair play big parts in everything that I end up trying to do. I know it’s the same for you, and I sense it’s the same for everybody who writes.

Spring went so close to despair, there was nowhere for it to go except to write up against despair, at which point you find what the hope is. Sometimes that hope is deep in despair. Hope produces itself out of the lack of hope. That’s what it is. I think that’s the description of hope.

We can lightly talk about hope, but actually hope is like the blade of a knife, and you are balanced on it, rather than you are cut by it. And so on that balance you may traverse something across which there’s no other way to traverse it. You know, there’s only that tight rope blade of the thing, and you traverse it as carefully and knowing how much is at risk as possible.