"This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. There is no time for anything else other than the best that you've got."
Jessica DuLong just sent this quotation from Toni Morrison to me--it's what I try to say in the writing workshops I teach but this is of course a much more elegant and Morrison-perfect iteration.
I met a woman at a wedding recently who is in MFA writing classes and was sort of wishy-washy about calling herself a writer, "Well--I write but I don't know if I'm a writer." Do you know this sentence? People feel that unless mainstream publishing has granted them a book deal they are somehow less than, somehow unofficial or unworthy. But it's precisely this dedication to "asserting the complexity and originality of life" that makes you a writer--this endeavor is something that mainstream publishing is less and less interested in.
Anyway. I'm going to go experience the complexity of New York sunshine in May. xxoo