Try not to become disappointed if someone doesn't like a story you've written. Stick up for your ideas, but listen to what other people say, too. They might have good advice.
Margaret MahyRead
I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Originality in writing is shaped by attitudes towards style and character.
In this quote, Margaret Mahy emphasizes that a writer's individuality and originality stem from their experiences and perceptions of style, events, and characters. She suggests that the way writers reflect on these elements influences their creative process and ultimately their writing, implying that true originality is derived from deep personal engagement with the art form.
Themes
WritingOriginalityStyleCharacterAttitude
In practice
Example use cases
A writing workshop where participants discuss the importance of originality in their essays.
More from Margaret Mahy
All quotes →Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.
Margaret MahyRead
By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life.
Margaret MahyRead
Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them.
Margaret MahyRead
When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.
Margaret MahyRead
Perhaps every time anyone is praised it means that someone else somewhere is going to be ignored
Margaret MahyRead
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