Erika Dreifus

“[W]hy I think you need courage as a writer is that at every step of the way you need the courage to believe you have something to say, you need the courage to make this a priority in your life, because often there are the other people saying you need to get a job, or why are you wasting your time, or whoever’s voice is in your head, so you need courage for that. You need the courage to show your writing to someone else, whether it’s people in your writing group, or your spouse, or a potential agent, or a potential magazine editor. So then, you need the courage to keep going when your writing is turned down, as it probably will be—I don’t know any writer who hasn’t had that experience. And then, you need the courage once it’s accepted to put it out int he world, and hear what people think of it, you’ll need the courage to live through bad reviews, most likely, or tepid reviews, you’ll need the courage to stand up to people who disagree with you, you’ll need courage in the face of offending people—every step of the way, you’ll need the inner core of strength, or what we say in Hebrew, ‘koach‘ to get you through.”

Source: Lesléa Newman, interviewed by Renée Olander in The Writer’s Chronicle, May/Summer 2011.