Alice Mattison

You can’t tell a

You can’t tell a writer they should just be more confident. Alice Mattison

Sometimes people want to know how to write a story from the point of view of a murderer and make her sympathetic. I think the answer is that you start by having her look for her car keys, because everybody knows what it’s like. Alice Mattison

Even murderers, I suppose,

Even murderers, I suppose, experience the loss of car keys the way the rest of us do. I mean, how can they not? Once you make this person scramble around the house looking for her car keys and finally find them, get in the car, and run into traffic, we can identify with her enough … Read more

For some people, it’s

For some people, it’s very easy to be spontaneous and they can pour out the most wonderful stuff. But it’s really hard to exert control over it, to think, ‘Well, this could be different. This could go in the opposite order, there could be more here and less there.’ For other people, it’s much easier … Read more

Sometimes it’s interesting to

Sometimes it’s interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely. Alice Mattison

I remember I had

I remember I had had one woman who had three or four kids, and some of them were having problems. I said, ‘Maybe you could go write somewhere else, away from your house.’ And sure enough, all kinds of wonderful stuff emerged. She was keeping too much charge of herself because she couldn’t stop being … Read more

You can’t tell a

Sometimes people want to

Even murderers, I suppose,

For some people, it’s

Sometimes it’s interesting to

I remember I had

I actually think it’s

There seems to be

I love to read

I’m very secretive. I’ll