#497: Joyce Carol Oates — A Writing Icon on Creative Process and Creative Living

I definitely feel that you create your mood by working ... If you feel that you just can't write or you're too tired... just stop thinking about it, and go and work.

The great adversary is being interrupted and distracted. So, distraction is our main adversary right now, I think, in contemporary America, in the world of the Internet and cell phones.

Most young writers should not be experimenting. They should just write what they want to write. They may want to write about their parents; they may want to write about their girlfriend or boyfriend or something in the first person that's funny ... But by no means should they try to experimental because they're not ready for it.

If anyone who's listening is a writer, I think you basically just have to do a lot of reading, and read what you like to read, and read for pleasure. Often, it's a good idea to read a number of books by the same writer.