I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.
Ursula K. Le GuinWriters are egotists. All artists are. They canโt be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the Solitude of the Authorโs Life, and lock themselves into cork-lined rooms or droop around in bars in order to whine better. But although most writing is done in solitude, I believe that it is done, like all the arts, for an audience. That is to say, with an audience. All the arts are performance arts, only some of them are sneakier about it than others.
Ursula K. Le GuinI donโt think โscience fictionโ is a very good name for it, but itโs the name that weโve got. It is different from other kinds of writing, I suppose, so it deserves a name of its own. But where I can get prickly and combative is, if Iโm just called a sci-fi writer. Iโm not. Iโm a novelist and poet. Donโt shove me into your damn pigeonhole, where I donโt fit, because Iโm all over. My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions.
Ursula K. Le GuinI don't believe that a writer 'gets' (takes into the head) an 'idea' (some sort of mental object) 'from' somewhere, and then turns it into words, and writes them on paper. At least in my experience, it doesn't work that way. The stuff has to be transformed into oneself, it has to be composted, before it can grow into a story.
Ursula K. Le Guin