Stacey

“I copied John Steinbeck, for instance: If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. I copied this from Annie Dillard: Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? And”
― Alice McDermott, What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction

“We like to think that our lives are within our control, but they may not be completely so. We are necessarily influenced by those who have come before us.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“YOU FREQUENTLY VIOLATE THESE RULES and then listed his own ten rules for good writing: Write to express, not to impress. Be proud of what you write. Rewrite always. Limit forms of the verb “to be.” Choose the exact word. Avoid clichés. Use cautiously simile, metaphor, and personification. Set inanimate objects against one another. Vary sentence structure. Create transitions. Proof your clean copy. If”
― Alice McDermott, What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction

“Because I am a Catholic, I find that the notion of the sacramental—of the ordinary transformed into the extraordinary, of outward signs of inner grace—appeals to me and so finds its way into my work. Because I am a Catholic, the language of ritual, its repetitions and refrains, appeals to me and so finds its way into my work.”
― Alice McDermott, What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction