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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
Choices
Indirect
Thought
Editor
Firsts
Explained
First
Editors
Writing
Direct
Choice
Difference
Differences
Stylistic

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I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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I think the difference between writing as someone and writing for them is that when you write for someone, you take on a kind of political burden or message, which I don't think we have the right to do.
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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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We have to give our poor, innocent, and undeserving-of-our-badness characters trouble in order to make them characters in a story.
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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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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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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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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
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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 actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
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I had never written about what it's like to live the life of a writer, and I had never read a book that combined talking about the life of writing and how you can do it, how you can stand it, how you can emotionally manage it, with the choices that we all make on the page.
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Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
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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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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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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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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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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 think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.
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Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
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