Getting too involved in too many things. It eats your brain.
Rosanna Greenstreet, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 October 2011 source ↗
The question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's The Q&A has retained this Proust-derived prompt from at least 2007 through 2026, and ABC independently put it to the Obamas in 2011.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
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Johnny Flynn
British actor and musician
Control freakery in the kitchen.
Being judgmental.
Oversensitivity.
My intense self-loathing.
More from Margaret Atwood
View profile →I don’t know. Probably Alice, maybe. But we were contemporaries, Alice Munro. I think it was probably most in poetry. I was of that age to get influenced. After a while, you don’t get influenced because your brain has turned to cement.
I would so much like to have a daily writing schedule. If I had one, I'd probably start about 9.30, write for 2 hours, have lunch, write another 2, then goof off. As it is, I goof off, then panic and write in the evenings. Do not follow my example.
In 1972, by Farley Mowat, after I’d had a modest success: “Now you’re a target, and people will shoot at you.” Which is not about how to write, but about some of the consequences of having done so.
That human beings will follow their stupid and greedy side, rather than their smart side, and go down the plughole. We’re circling the rim.
Begrudging mean-spiritedness.
Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
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Richard Ford, David Hare, J.K. Rowling, Jia Tolentino, Carrie Fisher, Judy Blume
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