ESF

While taking a break from a very mundane task at work today, I Googled one of my writing teachers from college, Elizabeth Stuckey-French. One of the results that popped up was this interview of her from 1998. This particular passage really struck me:

"Some people think that once you get published everything is set forever, but that is not how it works. Once you are published you don't feel any more worthy as a person, or as a writer, and you don't feel like you can just kick back and rest on your laurels for the rest of your life. You have to keep writing -- and you have to keep getting up to change the baby's diapers. Life goes on."

She also says:

"The only reason to write fiction is because you feel compelled to do it...Writing fiction is such a strange thing to do: inventing characters and having them talk to one another is such an odd way to express yourself. If you don't feel compelled to do that as a way of making sense of the world then I would suggest trying something else."

I am certainly guilty of getting wrapped up in the idea of "being published" (as evidenced in my About Me blurb). What I tend to forget is that what matters is that I write because I want to, because I enjoy it. I always feel like my best work comes out when I'm not thinking about the reader, per se, but about the story itself and the characters and how they would react in a situation and why.

Thanks for the reminder, ESF ;-)