Who Is Maud Dixon?

by Alexandra Andrews

All she had to do was become a writer, and her alienation would magically transform into evidence of brilliance rather than a source of shame.

Change is never a smooth curve; it comes in leaps and jolts, plateaus and remissions. And in the periods after an old identity fades away but before a new one is fully installed, there is a certain sense of impunity.

As if nothing quite matters. You are not quite yourself. You’re not quite anyone.

you spend your life looking for fairness you’ll be disappointed. Fairness doesn’t exist. And if it did, it would be boring. It would leave no room for the unexpected. But if you search for greatness—for beauty, for art, for transcendence—those are where the rewards are.

You only need to give one or two details about a character’s physical appearance. It’s all the reader needs to build an image in her mind. Anything more is a distraction.

Death is the most transformative event in anyone’s existence, she thought, yet once it has happened, it doesn’t matter to that person anymore. There’s no person left. At that point, any significance it has fragments and scatters. Its impact is diffused among the survivors.

Disdain, after all, has always been a useful stepping-stone to confidence, and that was what was required of her now. Something verging on hubris, not her usual muck of insecurity and self-doubt.