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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.
Alice Mattison
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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We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
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I think we need to develop the courage to write from the viewpoint of people who may seem quite different from ourselves, who might have a different sexual orientation or a different race or a different ethnicity.
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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'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.
Alice Mattison
I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.
Alice Mattison
I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.
Alice Mattison
I just like doing it, I like writing.
Alice Mattison
There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.
Alice Mattison
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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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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In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
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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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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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I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
Alice Mattison
Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are.
Alice Mattison
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.
Alice Mattison