These are my questions for today, in the voice of Richard Ford, an author who’s won many accolades for his novels and short story collections…and someone who’s voice is included in the above compilation.

Here, Ford is speaking of taking new directions with his work, and the fact that his editor can’t see it the validity of it.

“He didn’t like it because it deviated from what he thought I was: a Southerner who could write Southern books and a kind of hard-boiled book, like The Ultimate Good Luck. That’s all he could see.  I was starting off in some totally new direction, and he couldn’t figure out how to take it in.  But for me, that’s the challenge of being a writer after the first 10 years of trying: What am I going to do next?  How am I going to surprise myself?  How am I going to write about things I’ve never thought about before and make them logical and whole?”

I’m making decisions, you see…

[Post image: Black Notebook with Pencil by typofi at stock.xchng]