Amanda Korman
(2005)
How would you characterize the influence of your YWW experience in your life?
A person who wants to write is either going to write or she’s not; no program can make you sit at your desk alone every day for the rest of your life. But YWW showed me that I could do the solitary work of writing without being a solitary person. I cherish one particular memory of a camp-wide morning writing session—dozens of us at Tuttle House privately scribbling in our notebooks, silent and focused but also side by side.
What’s the best advice you can give a Young Writer (in general or in your specific genre)?
Read! Read, read, read to feed the precious lake of your mind. Then write.
What do you find yourself most often reading lately and why?
David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest was mind-scrubbing, heart-bursting, and life-affirming; I recommend it to you and you and you. Deborah Eisenberg’s short story, “Flaw in the Design,” also recently took off the top of my head.