Surprise

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An excerpt:

     Also be prepared as you write to be surprised by your own writing, surprised by what you find out about yourself and about your world.  Be ready for the happy accident.  Open yourself to the numinous, to the shapes and shades of language, to that first powerful thrust of story, to the character that develops away from you (sort of like a wayward adolescent), to the surprise of the exact and perfect ending.

     You are -- after all -- the very first reader of what you write.  Please that reader.  You may not have any other.

~ from Take Joy: A Book for Writers,

written by Jane Yolen