Treat Writing Like a Job

Alice McDermott said that she treats fiction writing like a full-time job — because it is one.

Alice writes four days a week and treats writing like a real job on those four days. She’s never been exclusively a full-time fiction writer. She teaches, does workshops, and fills her time with other activities as well. Few fiction writers actually write full time … or rather, few of them make it an exclusive job.

“As literary fiction writers, we’re trying to get to something true of us all. So write about common humanity, communal experience, not about a place, plot. Show universal truth to the reader in an interesting way.”

That sounds like a full-time job to me.

Learn more about Alice McDermott and her writing at https://www.alice-mcdermott.com/