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The Other Story

7 April 2013

'I don't have a choice. If there's a story there will always be another story. There's always the Other Story. If you write fiction, your job is to apprehend the truth, something real, and be sensitive enough to give back, a reflection that is both a mirror and beyond the real: so we can use the real and the reflection and be able to survive both. There is nothing singular. We exist at multiple points... 


Writers need anonymity. We really need to be invisible. The self is something you've got to get rid of as a writer. It's just something else that's in the way. Of course, you can't get rid of yourself, it all passes through the same mulch, mush, much of a muchness, but it's of no help, and it's not relevant. The only relevance is to hear whatever the story, or the voice, or the sentence or the syntax is doing. That's our responsibility.'


Ali Smith, author of There but for the in The Times