Sarah's writing journal

I respect the writer Amy Hempel so much that anything I can read about her, as well as her writing, is welcome. So am very pleased to find this new interview with her (good resource for other writers too). One question she was asked was what piece of creative writing advice would she give:

Not so much a piece of advice as a question to keep in mind, which is the most basic of questions: Why are you telling me this? Someone out there will be asking, and you better have a very compelling answer, or reason.

There are people who have been raised by loving parents to believe that the world awaits their every thought and sentence, and I'm not one of them. So I respond to that. Is this essential? The question might be, Is this something only you can say — or, only you can say it this way? Is this going to make anyone's life better, or make anyone's day better? And I don't mean the writer's day.

And my writing quote for today is going to be ... waiting for a storm.