Alice Mattison Quotes
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I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
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I'm very secretive. I'll write a whole novel and revise it, which might take me two years or more, and the people I know best don't know what I'm writing about.
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I began to see, again and again, stories that were first confusing and second where the emotional impact was muted because the big scene came before the explanation of what was going on. There was a reverse chronological order as well as a concealment of what exactly was going on. I think often that comes out of the fear of being boring, and sometimes I think it's just an attempt to seem clever.
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Somehow we have to detach from feeling as though money is a quick and easy standard by which we can gauge how well we're doing.
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I think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves.
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I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.
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Inevitably we start by thinking that if our work is any good, we'll get money. It's as we would if you started up a business or if you work in another profession.
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When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.
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Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
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You may be somebody who writes best for a small press that doesn't pay very well, but you might have a fascinating and intricate style that might not appeal to as many readers but will be incredibly meaningful to the readers you have. Truly, that's as wonderful if not more wonderful.
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Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
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There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.
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I just like doing it, I like writing.
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It's hard to say which of us is luckier, the ones who go through long periods when they can't write or the ones who can write pretty easily.
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Being part of a community of writers is huge. I really think that's why people go to MFA programs.
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I've been astonished how often, when I convince a writer to tell a story more straightforwardly and to tell it more simply and directly, it turns out that this author is great and the story is wonderful.
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Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.
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I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.
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Telling someone to be confident in the abstract is not going to make it easier for the unconfident writer to actually get herself or himself to the point of being able to put in the upsetting stuff.
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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
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There are so many different ways, most of them helpful and legal, to get yourself into a state of mind where writing is possible. It's going to be different for each person.
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I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
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Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.