The Quote That Convinced Me I Could Become a Writer.

John Gardner, “On Becoming a Novelist,” 1983. 

(Forgive his dated language. And the bullet points are mine):

Gardner says that the storyteller is “composed of several qualities, most of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or incivility: 

•  wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections) 
•  churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know is true) 
•  childishness (an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying over nothing)
•  a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both ( the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking, smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and neatness . . .) 
•  remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual feature of early adolescent and mental retardation) 
•  a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness, the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelings for or against religion 
•  patience like a cat’s 
•  a criminal streak of cunning 
•  psychological instability 
•  recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence; and finally, in inexplicable and incurable addiction to stories . . .

“Not all writers have exactly these same virtues, of course,” Gardner concludes. “Occasionally one finds one who is not abnormally improvident.” 

I WAS NEVER SO HAPPY TO BE NEUROTIC.