There are a few lucky souls for whom the whole process of writing is easy, for whom the smell of fresh paper is better than air, whose minds chuckle over their own agility, who forget to eat, and who consider the world at large an intrusion on their good time at the keyboard. But you and I are not among them. We are in love with words except when we have to face them. We are caught in a guilty paradox in which we grumble over lack of time, and when we have the time, we sharpen pencils, check emails, or clip the hedges.

Of course, there’s also joy. We write for the satisfaction of having wrestled a sentence to the page, for the flush of discovering an image, for the excitement of seeing a character come alive…

[Excerpt from Jane Burroway’s Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft]

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I believe the secret of writing is that fiction never exceeds the reach of the writer’s courage. The best fiction comes from the place where the terror hides, the edge of our worst stuff. I believe, absolutely, that if you do not break out in that sweat of fear when you write, then you have not gone far enough. And I know you can fake that courage when you don’t think of yourself as courageous — because I have done it. And that is not a bad thing, to fake it until you can make it. I know that until I started pushing on my own fears, telling the stories that were hardest for Continue reading →