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Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.

Alice Mattison

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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
People
Control
Interesting
Write
Need
Sometimes
Needs
Writing
Much
Freely

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I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
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Little children are all writers.
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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 just like doing it, I like writing.
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Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
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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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Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
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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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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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We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
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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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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
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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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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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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 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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I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!
Alice Mattison
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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.
Alice Mattison
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You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
Alice Mattison