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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
Choice
Difference
Differences
Stylistic
Choices
Indirect
Thought
Editor
Firsts
Explained
First
Editors
Writing
Direct
More quotes by Alice Mattison
Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.
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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 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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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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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 just like doing it, I like writing.
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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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Little children are all writers.
Alice Mattison
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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When I've taught writing to five, six, and seven year olds, it's not very different than talking to an adult writer. They're writers then, and when they get to be young teenagers they're not anymore. You might go and talk to them about writing, and they'll be very self-conscious or will have detached themselves from the group.
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I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.
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I find that I get very excited about what my students are up to and that I get to be the hurdle they need to jump over.
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Sometimes people want to know how to write a story from the point of view of a murderer and make her sympathetic. I think the answer is that you start by having her look for her car keys, because everybody knows what it's like.
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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 actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
Alice Mattison
Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
Alice Mattison
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.
Alice Mattison
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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We have to give our poor, innocent, and undeserving-of-our-badness characters trouble in order to make them characters in a story.
Alice Mattison
