Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?

If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say.

The more we are willing to separate from distraction and step into the open arms of boredom, the more writing will get on the page.

It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entomological specimen, is achieved through regular, disciplined practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools and the discipline to bring it out.

Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of this argument, let's say it's so. Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

...writing stories was always a bit like falling in love with a stranger and running off to Marrakech for a long weekend. It didn't have to be successful to be thrilling.