Goodreads asked Salamanca:

What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Salamanca Well, the first thing is to be careful about the label. I’m a writer. As soon as you say that you are labeling yourself, and setting up a whole bunch of expectations and creating a persona. You risk a lot of ego, and then you may not be a good writer on account of it. I saw a baseball cap that reads, in courier typeface of course, “Writer.” Then, what you do is more about acting like you are a writer, instead of actually writing. So the best thing about being a writer for me is that I’ve given myself permission to write, and it’s unconditional. There’s a good book on this called The Right to Write, by Julia Cameron. She explains a lot of it in detail, how we are stifled with the pressure of writing perfectly or not at all. Once you allow yourself to write for the sheer joy of it, because you love it, because you have to do it, because it’s like breathing, then that’s the best thing about being a writer. What’s the best thing about an orange cranbury muffin? Well, eating it. Same thing. What’s the best thing about living? Um… being alive. The best thing about being a writer is writing.

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