Mik Everett's Blog

But now I have twins. They’re three years old. The judgey stuff has changed from “You’ll never find time to read once you have kids!” (except I did and do) to “How do you have time to read with twins?” and still, no one is saying those things to my husband. So, I’ve come to this conclusion: the idea that you can’t find time to read once you have children is bullshit if reading is a big priority to you, your kids are healthy, and you have a partner to help you, and it’s mostly sexist bullshit.

Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.

“Writers ever since writing began have had problems, and the main problem narrows down to just one word—life.”

Coming Soon from Kleft Jaw Press...

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

I remember someone in class, one of my friends, a guy, saying, “You know, you’re writing stories about women for women,” and it had never dawned on me. It was so insulting—and now I’m like, You know what? Maybe I am writing for women. Not just for women, but I am a woman! And the fact that that’s something that literary women writers don’t talk about…I find that a little confusing, and I wonder if that makes younger literary women writers feel like there’s something less valuable to that.

“You’re…writing for other writers to an extent—the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.”