Ask the Author: Anna Pottier
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Anna Pottier
The best thing an aspiring writer can do is this: read.
Read whatever makes your pulse quicken. In my case, having just completed my memoir about life with the poet Irving Layton, I immersed myself in books about writers such as DH Lawrence and Jack Kerouac, as well as the painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
If a book does not speak to you, perhaps return to it later. Better to read whatever inspires you than to lose precious time on pieces that vex or seem too obscure.
Like everyone else, I had that funk-slump moment when it seemed as though "all the good stories have already been written." Fine. Yes, they probably have. Here's the epiphany: you are utterly unique, ergo, whatever story you are bursting to tell will perforce emerge as your very own, unique as your fingerprints.
So read. Read and of course write. "Blacken pages" as Irving Layton used to tell me. Read as often as you can, and write something - anything - every single day. Writing, like dieting, has no magic formula beyond work, sweat, and dogged determination.
Read whatever makes your pulse quicken. In my case, having just completed my memoir about life with the poet Irving Layton, I immersed myself in books about writers such as DH Lawrence and Jack Kerouac, as well as the painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
If a book does not speak to you, perhaps return to it later. Better to read whatever inspires you than to lose precious time on pieces that vex or seem too obscure.
Like everyone else, I had that funk-slump moment when it seemed as though "all the good stories have already been written." Fine. Yes, they probably have. Here's the epiphany: you are utterly unique, ergo, whatever story you are bursting to tell will perforce emerge as your very own, unique as your fingerprints.
So read. Read and of course write. "Blacken pages" as Irving Layton used to tell me. Read as often as you can, and write something - anything - every single day. Writing, like dieting, has no magic formula beyond work, sweat, and dogged determination.
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