JOYCE CAROL OATES: Well, everybody has some talent to write. The problem, I think, is finding a distinctive voice. Everyone has stories to tell. Everyone has families and amazing occasions in your life. How do you find a voice that's distinctive and original so that when you tell your story, somebody will want to read beyond your family or your friends or people in your creative writing?
So I think that we acquire voices partly through our own imagination but also partly through reading. You'll read a good deal to see how other people have written; how the young Hemingway appropriated voices; how William Faulkner built his career somewhat more slowly than Hemingway; the kind of immediate, exciting, and intense voice of Edgar Allen Poe so that when you write, you may find a voice that's appropriate for what you have to say.