There is no formula, to the life or to the work [of writing], and all any writer finally knows are the little decisions he or she has been forced to make, given the particular choices. There’s no golden recipe. Most things literary are stubborn as colds; they resist all formulas—a chemist’s, a wet nurse’s, a magician’s. There is no formula outside the sick devotion to the work. Perhaps one would be wise when young even to avoid thinking of oneself as a writer—for there’s something a little stopped and satisfied, too healthy, in that. Better to think of writing, of what one does as an activity, rather than an identity—to write, I write, we write; to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun; to keep working at the thing, at all hours, in all places, so that your life does not become a pose, a pornography of wishing.
- Lorrie Moore, from her essay "On Writing" in See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary (Penguin Random House, 2018). You can read the whole thing here.
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