If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was very young, I used to share much of what I wrote with my family, but as I got older and more self-conscious, it became a much more private process.
I wish I could write more make-believe. It's a lot easier to write about hard times and when things are going wrong. But I've never been a private person.
Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.
You write alone, but you write hoping that there will be readers who will connect with what you write, and it's so wonderful and amazing - I can't even tell you - when that actually happens.
Writing is an incredibly creatively empowering experience for me. It is the place where nobody tries to control what I'm doing.
Writing is something I've always done on the side. I thought that no one would be interested, so I kept it to myself.
It's so much easier to write for a person in your life than to write for some imagined readership, so you write something that's more intimate and true.
Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.
I have been writing since I was about 20, and at first I wrote in secret and never showed anybody. I was very concerned about making a living, so I conducted.
For me, writing isn't a way of being public or private; it's just a way of being. The process is always full of pain, but I like that. It's a reality, and I just accept it as something not to be avoided.