Quotes by Debra Dean

Debra Dean

Along the way, I’ve worked as a waitress, I’ve done phone surveys, and worked as a receptionist, and for the last twenty years I’ve taught. When I was an actor, the key was to find a job that kept your days free to audition.

Jobs

Keys

Phones

As a writer, the ideal job is the one that allows you time and mental space away from it. Teaching seemed to me like the obvious choice – those summers off, you know – but my experience may serve as a cautionary tale.

Jobs

Summer

Teaching

Before I got my present job, I spent many years teaching writing part-time, so-called, at community colleges and universities. It’s academia’s version of migrant labor.

Jobs

Teaching

Writing

I always think, OK, this is good, but I’ll do it better next time. “And so we beat on, boats against the current. . .” It may not be the recipe for a life of contentment, but that imperfectability is what makes writing such an engaging endeavor, something you can do for the rest of your life and not get bored.

Bored

Thinking

Writing

I figured that to be a writer I would need to have been born in the nineteenth century, be British, or have three names. So I turned my sights elsewhere . . . to acting.

Acting

Names

Sight

I haven’t written anything yet that makes me think, This is it! and I don’t imagine I ever will. I don’t know how it is with you, but when I finish something, even when I’m pleased with the results, it never quite matches the shimmering vision that was out ahead of me as I wrote.

Never Quit

Thinking

Vision

I just can’t fathom tweeting, and I’d rather spend my time writing a book than a blog, but I rather grudgingly agreed to a Facebook page. I had a brief, intense romance with Facebook. It’s weirdly addictive, but anything that time-sucking is a danger for a writer who writes as slowly as I do. Now I post only occasionally and nothing very confessional. I think I’m carbon dating myself as I speak.

Book

Thinking

Writing

I kept writing short stories and sending out my manuscript, and it kept coming back like a bad penny. It was rejected all over town, quite often in very complimentary terms, but rejected nonetheless. Agents would return it saying that they loved it but didn’t think they could sell it, or they would ask if I could change the collection into linked stories.

Stories

Thinking

Writing

I loved short stories, and they were all I wanted to write. I love the compression of them and the exactitude needed to get a whole world into such a small space.

Space

Stories

Writing

I tell my students, if you’re interested in marine biology or llama farming, follow that string. Yes, it will probably take you a longer time to write that book, but it’s not a race. That’s another great thing about being a writer: you don’t age out.

Book

Marine

Writing

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Acting

Art

Artist

Awareness

Biographies

Black

Book

Bored

Careers

Carols

Commitment

Diaries

Envy

Evening

Fall

Father

Fiction

Fun

Helping

Historical

Ifs

Imagine

Jobs

Keys

Kings

Lucky

Marine

May

Mother

Moving

Names

Never Quit

New York

Nice

Peculiar

Phones

Radical

Russia

Sight

Space

Stories

Summer

Teaching

Thinking

Unusual

Vision

Waiting

Weekend

Would Be

Writing

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Quotes by Debra Dean

Debra Dean

Along the way, I’ve worked as a waitress, I’ve done phone surveys, and worked as a receptionist, and for the last twenty years I’ve taught. When I was an actor, the key was to find a job that kept your days free to audition.

As a writer, the ideal job is the one that allows you time and mental space away from it. Teaching seemed to me like the obvious choice – those summers off, you know – but my experience may serve as a cautionary tale.

Before I got my present job, I spent many years teaching writing part-time, so-called, at community colleges and universities. It’s academia’s version of migrant labor.

I figured that to be a writer I would need to have been born in the nineteenth century, be British, or have three names. So I turned my sights elsewhere . . . to acting.

I haven’t written anything yet that makes me think, This is it! and I don’t imagine I ever will. I don’t know how it is with you, but when I finish something, even when I’m pleased with the results, it never quite matches the shimmering vision that was out ahead of me as I wrote.

I loved short stories, and they were all I wanted to write. I love the compression of them and the exactitude needed to get a whole world into such a small space.

I tell my students, if you’re interested in marine biology or llama farming, follow that string. Yes, it will probably take you a longer time to write that book, but it’s not a race. That’s another great thing about being a writer: you don’t age out.

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Topics by Debra Dean

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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