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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.

Alice Mattison

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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
First
Editors
Writing
Direct
Choice
Difference
Differences
Stylistic
Choices
Indirect
Thought
Editor
Firsts
Explained

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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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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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I actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
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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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There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.
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I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.
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Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
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I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
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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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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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I think a day in your life on which nothing bad happens may be a wonderful day, but it probably isn't going to be the basis of a story.
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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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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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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 don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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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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We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
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Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are.
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If you have a character stand up and put on her shoes and open the door, in order to do that, you're imagining her shoes and her clothes and her house and her door. The character becomes more real. But once you've done that, you can probably just get it all across with a couple of details.
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I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.
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