Alice Mattison Quotes
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The main thing is to explain to yourself that everybody suffers.
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We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't necessarily just writing saleable novels or getting huge advances.
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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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Every once in a while someone says, 'You can't really learn anything, if you're really a writer then you wouldn't need to do it.' But I think what people need is the sense of not being alone. They go to MFA programs to be part of a community of people who care, and then you start caring about your friend who is trying to edit a magazine and your other friend who is stuck in the middle of her poem. There you have all kinds of things to worry about besides your own success.
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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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You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.
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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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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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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 love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
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I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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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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Being part of a community of writers is huge. I really think that's why people go to MFA programs.
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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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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 think you have to remember that writing is hard; my first editor used to say that to me.
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Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
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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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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
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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'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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Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.