Making people smaller than they are because of something they can’t handle in themselves.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
Do you rely on inspiration or discipline to make work?
Craft & work
Question
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Daily life
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Time & hindsight
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Begrudging mean-spiritedness.
Rosanna Greenstreet, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 October 2011 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 206 →People taking themselves seriously.
Impatience and temper. Enough already!
Bryan Adams
Canadian singer-songwriter and musician
People who make you wait around for them.
More from Margaret Atwood
View profile →The white-water canoe run I did solo at Lady Evelyn Park 20 years ago. It was impromptu. It took the skin off my knees. It was an unnecessary risk.
As for motivation, I'd say it's a combo of 50s Puritan work ethic and finish-it-itis -- I hate not finishing things.
Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
Anonymous. She’s working to make the planet greener.
Getting too involved in too many things. It eats your brain.
In 1972, by Farley Mowat, after I’d had a modest success: “Now you’re a target, and people will shoot at you.” Which is not about how to write, but about some of the consequences of having done so.
More on values & belief
- Which living person do you most admire, and why? 421 answers
- What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong? 89 answers
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 36 answers
- What important truth do very few people agree with you on? 36 answers
- What have you come to understand about what it means to be human? 29 answers
- What do you need to believe in order to get through the day? 22 answers
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