You have to be tough minded if you’re going to write at all. You learn to make your own quiet by muscling your daily life aside and clearing a space for yourself. You have to learn not to waste time whining about what you don’t have and feeling sorry for yourself. You have to teach yourself that no one is going to give you what you need, that you have to make it for yourself to have it at all.—Pam Durban, interviewed by Cheryl Reid

I love William Stafford’s advice. Someone asked, “What do you do about writer’s block?” Stafford said, “Lower my standards and keep on going.” And, anyway, perfection is an illusion. It’s just the way you have to be about it. I don’t really teach writing. I teach patience and toughness, stubbornness and willingness to make the mistakes and go on. And the willingness to look like an idiot sometimes. That’s the only way any good thing ever gets done, it seems to me.—Richard Bausch, interviewed by Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais

Reading and writing are peculiar activities, and yet when I write, there is an odd confluence of the physical and mental. I often need the physical act of typing to bring something out. It is not enough to just think. The words seem to come through my fingers.—Siri Hustvedt, interviewed by Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais

When I’m in the middle of a story, publishing is one of the last things I’m thinking about. I’m trying to survive the story. Someone said to Ron Carlson something about Ron being in the middle of a story, and he said, No, I’m not in the middle; I’m hanging off the edge of it. I think that’s such a wise way to put it. I used to think, Once I get past this one point, the rest of the story will be easy. But there’s no coasting in stories.—Roy Parvin, interviewed by Linda Swanson-Davies

Issue #15 WA15$6.00