WRITERS ASK ISSUE 76 EXCERPTS
Add the prefix re, which means again, back, anew, and it's clear that the act of revising is not an act of editing, but an act of rethinking, of questioning. Revising is observing anew, understanding again, going back to see.—Amina Gautier
I try to sit down every morning and do something. The advice I would give another writer is that you have to be willing to write it wrong. But for me, writing it wrong is so painful. My husband can slog out a first draft and it's lousy and he knows it's lousy but he's got something to work from.—Joan Wickersham, interviewed by Robert Birnbaum
This is the secret to my "craft," and the only piece of advice I feel fit to give. When doubt clouds your writing mind, ask if your intention resonates, if it rings the bell inside your chest that connects you to other needful beings, the bell that connects you to the heart of the earth.—Ming Holden
As to readers: I suppose that I am the reader I'm writing for. I'm trying to create that shelf of fiction that I desperately want to read, that I need to read, but that no one else has, to my knowledge, yet written and no one else will likely ever write. My stories go exactly where my mind goes.—Pinckney Benedict, interviewed by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum and Alexander Lumans