Because they seem pertinent to the comments on yesterday's post, I thought I would quote a few lines today from the great Alice Munro. What she talks about here is something that writers have to face up to all the time . . . even before they know they are writers.

from "No Advantages," in the story collection The View from Castle Rock

Self-dramatization got short shrift in our family. Though now that I come to think of it, it wasn't exactly that word they used. They spoke of calling attention. Calling attention to yourself. The opposite of which was not exactly modesty but a strenuous dignity and control, a sort of refusal. The refusal to feel any need to turn your life into a story, either for other people or for yourself. And when I study the people I know about in the family, it does seem that some of us have that need in large and irresistible measure--enough so as to make the others cringe with embarrassment and apprehension. That's why the judgment or warning had to be given out so frequently.