Authors and celebrities have opened up to New York magazine to discuss how they got their start.
The cover story includes moments of epiphany from Jeffrey Eugenides, George Saunders, Sloane Crosley and Ta-Nehisi Coates, among others. Here is what author Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?, had to say:
It was the first time, writing, I had a sense for how total a writer’s freedom is. I don’t think that ever completely went away, and it seems the biggest leap I made: from thinking I had to write in a certain way to realizing that nobody was there with me as I was sitting at my desk — and for good reason — because your only obligation is to listen to yourself. Every epiphany I’ve ever had about writing or how to write in the years since has only been an elaboration of that knowledge: that all you have to do is hew closely to how you feel it should go.