In memoir, you have to be particularly careful not to alienate the reader by making the material seem too lived-in. It mustn't have too much of the smell of yourself, otherwise the reader will be unable to make it her own.
Rachel CuskRead
As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the balance writers maintain between external feedback and their internal creative process.
In this quote, Rachel Cusk expresses the idea that while she is affected by reviews—feeling pleased by praise and disappointed by criticism—these reactions do not dictate her future writing. This suggests a healthy detachment from external validation, indicating that the core of her creativity and the quality of her writing remain autonomous from outside opinions.
Themes
WritingReviewsCreativityFeedbackResilience
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote during a writing workshop to emphasize the importance of focusing on one's own creative voice.
More from Rachel Cusk
All quotes →There is always shame in the creation of an expressive work, whether it's a book or a clay pot. Every artist worries about how they will be seen by others through their work. When you create, you aspire to do justice to yourself, to remake yourself, and there is always the fear that you will expose the very thing that you hoped to transform.
Rachel CuskRead
Shame is something you'll find a lot of - particularly Catholic - girls feel about their bodies, about their sexuality, about their diet, about anything you like. Shame is the way you keep them down. That's the way to crush a girl.
Rachel CuskRead
I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.
Rachel CuskRead
It seems to me that 'women's writing' by nature would not seek equivalence in the male world. It would be a writing that sought to express a distinction, not deny it.
Rachel CuskRead
We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.
Rachel CuskRead
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