{"id":43036,"date":"2025-05-12T06:30:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T18:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=43036"},"modified":"2025-05-11T20:59:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T08:59:22","slug":"a-coda-on-last-thursdays-quote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2025\/05\/12\/a-coda-on-last-thursdays-quote\/","title":{"rendered":"A Coda On Last Thursday’s Quote"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had barely posted last Thursday’s writing quote, when I realized that I didn’t agree with it 100%.<\/p>\n

Just to recap, the quote was from US author Ellen Gilchrist (1935 -2024)\u00a0 and read:<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/em>How often I have tried to tell writing students that the first thing a writer must do is love the reader and wish the reader well.\u201d<\/em> <\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I still love the quote and I definitely do think respecting and valuing readers is a really important part of the writing life. The “not 100%” lies in that, on reflection, I don’t believe it’s the “first” thing.<\/p>\n

\"\"

… havin’ fun with readers \ud83d\ude09<\/p><\/div>\n

The absolute first thing a writer must do, in my humble opinion, is love writing. And the second is to love reading. If only because, in my experience, they go together in a very yin-yang type way, where one blends into the other and the boundary between them is always fluid.<\/p>\n

\"\"

with Felicia, a young ‘Wall of Night’ reader<\/p><\/div>\n

So while loving the reader is important, it ranks after the other two for me — because without first loving reading and writing enough to write oneself, there will be<\/em> no readers to love. (Upside-down smile.)<\/p>\n

\"\"

At Armageddon<\/p><\/div>\n

I can assure you, though, that I love all three. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

\"\"

Nothing beats a bookshop crowd<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had barely posted last Thursday’s writing quote, when I realized that I didn’t agree with it 100%. Just to recap, the quote was from US author Ellen Gilchrist (1935 -2024)\u00a0 and read: \u201cHow often I have tried to tell writing students that the first thing a writer must do is love the reader and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,19,10,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-writing","category-funstuff","category-general","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43036"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43040,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43036\/revisions\/43040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}