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From Anna Quindlen

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Alison Kent, Quotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “From Anna Quindlen”

  1. Melissa Blue Says:
    November 26th, 2007 at 3:06 pm

    I completely agree. For the first two years I refused to write any backstory in the main ms and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t know my characters. I also convinced myself the first draft had to be PERFECT. It killed my writing. Gladly I gave up perfection. I’m not happily writing characters I know about.

  2. Portia Da Costa Says:
    November 27th, 2007 at 3:11 am

    I like this quote. I often find myself thinking ‘I should be doing this…’ and ‘I should be doing that…’ with my WIPs and fretting that they’re not quite right by various sets of standards. And it’s paralysing. I always right best when I shake off this compulsion to write the ‘perfect’ story… and just allow myself to take charge and write what’s in my imagination.

  3. Tony Brown Says:
    December 1st, 2007 at 6:24 pm

    At some point, we all have to recognize that we are not the wind. At best we are the sail. The questions we face during our lives leaves us with a challenge: are we going to change the world or are we going to change ourselves. Truthfully, we only have the ability to change ourselves, and if we do that properly, then I might respectfully submit … that is how the world becomes a better place. Go Make a Circle.

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