My beginnings are not beginnings; I just start. Sometimes I have to write the beginning after the book is done. Well, that seems like a natural thing, but many people don't go forward because the beginning isn't right; they just leave it until they get it right. I write what's there, what I know is there. If I have to rewrite it or change it, I'm... See more

Students are frequently unwilling to rewrite, because rewriting suggests to them that what they wrote the first time is wrong, and they don't like that feeling. But it's not that, it's just that writing is a process and you are cleaning up the language.

It's not that you're changing it: you're doing it better, hitting a higher note or a deeper tone... See more

writing has become almost a celebrity thing in the sense that people don't want to write; they want to be authors. And that's quite different.

I was writing for some clear, single person—I would say myself, because I was quite content to be the only reader. I thought that everything that needed to be written had been written: there was so much. I am not being facetious when I say I wrote it in order to read it. And I think that is what makes the difference, because I could look at it as a... See more

Students are frequently unwilling to rewrite, because rewriting suggests to them that what they wrote the first time is wrong, and they don't like that feeling. But it's not that, it's just that writing is a process and you are cleaning up the language.

It's not that you're changing it: you're doing it better, hitting a higher note or a deeper tone... See more

In my life, I've never known what I was doing from one minute to the next; I was just working, I didn't have a "career." I grew up in a time when people didn't think like they do now about what they are going to be and do. I wanted to be a whole person, I wanted to be a good person, I wanted to be all those big things, and none of that had anything... See more

Students are frequently unwilling to rewrite, because rewriting suggests to them that what they wrote the first time is wrong, and they don't like that feeling. But it's not that, it's just that writing is a process and you are cleaning up the language.

It's not that you're changing it: you're doing it better, hitting a higher note or a deeper tone... See more

Students are frequently unwilling to rewrite, because rewriting suggests to them that what they wrote the first time is wrong, and they don't like that feeling. But it's not that, it's just that writing is a process and you are cleaning up the language.

I now think of myself as a writer. I didn't realize it on my own though. It was after Sula was published; I was talking to my editor (Robert Gottlieb of Knopf) one day, and he said, "This is what you are going to be when you grow up. This is it." I said, "A writer?" He said, "That's right. Of all those other little things you do, this is it. This... See more