I Wrote Before I Could Write. I Got My Hands On A Journal, Maybe A Hand-me-down; I Had Three Older Siblings. My First Entries Are In The Handwriting Of The Sister Closets In Age (5 Years My Senior). She Must Have Gotten Tired Of My Dictations Because She Gave Up And Then My Blocky Scrawl Shows Up. I Wrote Plays As A Kid Mostly.
My Oldest Sister Was An Actress Living In Nyc By The Time I Was Ten, And Desperately Wanted To Be The One In Charge Of The Words.
If Men Are Paid/praised More Than Women For The Same Work Than It Always Pays To Allow The Man To Have More Freedom To Pour Himself Into His Work - Think Of Athletes, Actors Over The Age Of 28, Lawyers, Accountants, College Deans.
When A Colleague Of Mine Had A Notable New York Times Book, I Said, Turn One Of The Chapters In The Collection Into A Pitch For A Novel And Sell It To Your Publisher.
I Want Women Writers To Write Boldly, Wildly, Deeply. I Want Them To Feel Really Liberated To Tell The Brutal Truth, However They See That Truth And Are Moved To Tell It.
Literature Has Done Great Work For Feminism - Writing And Reading Are A Practice Of Empathy - And Great Literature Will Continue To Do So.
The Generation Of Women Who Came Before Us Did Much Of Our Shouting. They Laid The Groundwork And Now We Can Be Calm And Constant And Steady.
The Lessons Learned In Journalism Also Apply. Writing For Npr Has Taught Me To Cut A Piece In Half And Then In Half Again - Without Losing The Essence. Apply That To The Swollen Prose Of A Bulky Novel And You Might Reveal A Beautiful Work.
You Learn To Exploit Genre For The More Important Things - To My Mind - Like Story, Character, Image, Language.
Being Cross-genre, You Can Encounter An Image And Decide Not Only How To Best Express It But What Form Would Express It Best.
