why I write

Here are some other techniques people use to access and maintain the zone:

• Introducing a long delay between when you do the work and when it is shown to the world. Annie Ernaux writes about this in A Simple Passion, a memoir about how she becomes obsessed in a banal way with a man who is having an affair with her—the thought that others will read th

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I know now I was grieving something , the death of an ambition. I started attending reading events at Green Apple Books, my local bookstore, because it was something I liked in grad school, and I had to get myself out of the house. Going to those events was (is) a way of traveling without moving; they have afforded me an incredibly valuable educati... See more

​The writer Jorge Luis Borges said, “A writer—and, I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose…All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape ou

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Along with many of the same fear-based questions Gilbert talked about, Hasan said people would always ask if he thought he was actually going to make it as a hugely successful comedian. “I don’t like that question,” he said. “I fundamentally don’t like that question.” Because that question implies that he was doing comedy as a means to some end (mo

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If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral ob... See more

Seeing your ideas crumble can be a frustrating experience, but it is the point if you are writing to think. You want it to break. It is in the cracks the light shines in.