Quote

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.

Alice Mattison

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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Point
Actually
Upsetting
Stuff
Confident
Someone
Upset
Able
Abstract
Going
Telling
Make
Writer
Easier

More quotes by Alice Mattison

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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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There seems to be a tremendous desire among many people now to know authors and how they work, to know what's autobiographical and what isn't.
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Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
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Little children are all writers.
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Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
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We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
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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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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
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I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
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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 get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.
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You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
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It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who is different.
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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 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 just like doing it, I like writing.
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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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Writers sometimes are paid a great deal of money, but much more frequently they're not paid or are paid only a little bit.
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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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I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
Alice Mattison