“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another.” -John Steinbeck

“The genuine writer relinquishes blame, struggles for understanding.”-Valerie Miner

“A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything is golden. In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.” - Junot Diaz

What are you beliefs about writers?

I believe that writers write and that they set a time and place to work and show up. You likely have other opinions as well. How have those ideas changed in the last few months? Steinbeck keeps writing, as does Diaz—with or without a pandemic.

I find myself writing in small pockets these days—a 35-minute burst here, an hour and a half there. Am I still a writer? I think that when I am truly immersed in a paragraph or a line and aware of what inside me needs to be expressed, I am a writer. I am writing.

Miner says that the genuine writer is motivated by understanding. I like this kind attention as well and work to cultivate it in myself.

Tell me: what are your current beliefs about being a writer?