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To be a good writer, you must have the paradoxical trait of being a gregarious loner. Marcel Proust claimed that he needed to leave his friends so he could truly be with them; while thinking and writing about his friends, he communicated with them far more thoroughly and excitingly than when he was with them at a party.

As a writer you need a strong sense of independence, of being and thinking on your own —so go ahead, work alone. I will give you a lot of advice, but you need not take it. Especially when you disagree, you will formulate your own principles. No matter what advice I suggest in this book, which is designed to be a fiction workshop you can attend on your own, you ought to write freely. 

Ought and free don't seem to fit together, and that's another paradox of writing: If you can incorporate several writing principles and yet retain and even advance your independence of writing, you've got it made.

Ultimately, write any way that gives you a sense of freedom. What a teacher and a fellow workshopper might discourage as a vice might, through practice, become a virtue.

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