Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose.
Meg WolitzerThe only option for a creative person was constant motionโa lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldnโt do it any longer.
Meg WolitzerWe sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be "seen," when in fact we already know what they're about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there's a decent chance they will be "fiction-worthy," as you call it. The idea of the "sweep of ideas" is a complicated one.
Meg WolitzerEven if you yourself were unhappy and anxious, whenever you glimpsed happiness in your child, you suddenly became happy too.
Meg Wolitzer