Goodreads asked Karen Joy Fowler:

How do you get inspired to write?

Karen Joy Fowler I turned thirty and took a good long look at my life. What did I really want, I asked myself. Whatever that was, it was time to get to it. Thirty years old! Practically grown up.

It turned out what I wanted had been there all along. I just wasn’t asking the question. I just wasn’t listening to the answer. I wanted to write. I had always wanted to write.

I think lots of writers begin because they have a particular story they need to tell. That wasn’t me. I decided to be a writer long before I knew what stories I would write.

Step one: make the decision.

Step two: persuade yourself and your family that it’s a perfectly reasonable decision.

Step three: find the time in which to do this perfectly reasonable thing.

Step four: find your story.

Repeat and repeat and repeat for the rest of your life.

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