[PIANO PLAYING]
ANNE RICE: The most important thing that I can tell a young writer is do it. Do not listen to anybody who tells you that you can't. Do not listen to anybody who tells you how to do it. And do not listen to anybody that tells you you're doing it the wrong way. Do it and do it in your voice, with your characters, and your story. And keep doing it. If you get discouraged, save it, put it away. If you're discouraged by the fact that you haven't written for a month or two, just start up again. Just keep going. The real harm that was done to me as a young writer was done by people who told me that I wasn't a writer. I wasn't doing it the right way. That this or that was required of a writer. That I couldn't succeed at it. That nobody ever really got published. That what makes you think you want to be a writer. Those are the people that harmed me as a young person. It was that kind of advice that harmed me. But it really didn't harm me because I never believed it. I just went right on doing what I believed in doing which was writing stories. And then one day I became a published writer. Now before that happened-- before it became published-- I adopted the attitude that I was indeed a writer. That was my profession and that's what I was. And whether I was published or not, it didn't matter. I was a writer. And within about a year of that time when I made that decision, I got published. And then there wasn't any question in anybody's mind.