‘I have retired to write my masterpiece. I am a great writer. No one knows it yet, because I haven’t written anything…’

So begins Ágota Kristóf’s wry short fiction about that most familiar of issues to every aspiring author: the issue of struggling to write. Using Kristóf’s story as a prompt, the November Collective have created an anthology that spans a breadth of feelings, failures and fantasies surrounding the act and process of writing.

Anxieties over authorship and authorial longevity, the dynamics between teacher and student, the frustration of not being able to put pen to paper, the small joys and self-reflexive stories around the ritual of preparing to write and the writing process itself, and the desire to pin down furtive ideas and fleeting images are all captured in this daringly eclectic and experimental collection.

Allowing Kristóf’s fiction to be a doorway into the creative possibilities of the seemingly impossible sense of writer’s block, each contributor has carefully written into and beyond the difficulties of writing. In expansive and evocative prose, the Collective explores the power and erotic allure not only of the figure of ‘the great writer’, but of language itself.

Bringing together contributions from Sara Thorsen, Sarah Carson, Lu Rose Cunningham, Eva Gold, Denise Rose Hansen, Poppy Jean, Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou, Forest Greenway and Jeff Ko, The Writer opens the reader to the manifold experiences of what it is and means to attempt to write today.