We are Fragile Beings

What’s your advice to new writers?

Just write and write and write. Don’t think about publication, and don’t think about externals. Don’t think about literary trends or fashions. Don’t write from the outside in, write from the inside out. Write from emotion. Emotion is the engine of all great fiction; all great books engage the heart as well as the mind. Write about the things that frighten you and tear you apart. Write about the worst things in your life. I don’t mean write memoir, write it as fiction, that way you can change the facts to make your emotional reality precise and true. Write down the things you have found most difficult, the things that wake you up at three in the morning, the things that remind you that we are fragile beings, kept only by a metaphysical rule from falling off the surface of the earth and flying helplessly into black space. Write about the beautiful terror of being human, being alive, having a soul and a heart.

- Roxana Robinson, Advice to Writers