She published. “I come from a part of the world where people did work rather than just talk about it,” she said. “And so if you feel that you just can’t write, or you’re too tired, or this, that, and the other, just stop thinking about it and go and work.” Which is what Oates has done, nearly every day thus far of her fifty-eight-year career. Grinding down pencils and pens as she wrote first drafts longhand, wearing through typewriters and then laptops as she polished her manuscripts.
