The Writing Life, 1964–68

This chapter describes Nathalie Sarraute's day-to-day life that was arranged around the basic existential necessity that “writing was always difficult, but not writing was worse.” It reveals how Nathalie kept a disciplined routine of writing every morning for two or three hours in a café five minutes' walk away from home and kept domestic preoccupations and family responsibilities to a minimum. It also discloses how Natalie voiced every word in a low murmuring that went unnoticed in the surrounding hubbub and wrote slowly, which resulted to repeated corrections. The chapter emphasizes how Nathalie's books would take written shape only after pages and pages of fairly formless attempts and the beginning of the story in place for the rest to follow. It details Nathalie's writing process that would take about two years, after which she would revise exhaustively, before giving her manuscript to her husband to be typed.