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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.
Alice Mattison
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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
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Diversify
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More quotes by Alice Mattison
I think you have to remember that writing is hard my first editor used to say that to me.
Alice Mattison
I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.
Alice Mattison
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.
Alice Mattison
Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
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
In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
Alice Mattison
Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
Alice Mattison
I just like doing it, I like writing.
Alice Mattison
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.
Alice Mattison
We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
Alice Mattison
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.
Alice Mattison
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
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.
Alice Mattison
You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.
Alice Mattison
I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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.
Alice Mattison
I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
Alice Mattison
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
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.
Alice Mattison
When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.
Alice Mattison
