Goodreads asked Heather Tosteson:

What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Heather Tosteson For years my only form of artistic expression was writing, but for the last twenty or years, I have used other art forms as well as writing, so I think one of the most rewarding things about being an artist, any kind of artist, is your relationship with the material you use—words, images, stories, or clay, paper, plaster, or the human voice and human body, or some combination of these. The material is intrinsically fascinating to me, especially how it connects whatever inside me that aches to be known with something beyond itself.

Words are intrinsically social, intrinsically visceral, they bring cultures and contexts deep inside us. The fact that we can also actively shape them to reveal, explore, connect with that which is uniquely ourselves or uniquely other never ceases to amaze me. I love reading, I love slipping into worlds that exist in some transformative space that is both accessible and always out of reach, substantial and immaterial. I love the intimacy of the connection this permits with the most open and mysterious part of another person. When I write a story, often all I feel while writing are the holes in the story. But when I'm through, when I'm reading it, I never get over the amazement that what has come from my pen now has an existence outside me, that it feels as solid as the wood floor beneath my feet, the other stories I love to slip inside for hours or days. Each time, my attention is turned to the mystery of where these stories come from and the amazing reality of their existence too.

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