Literary Birthday – 15 February – Miranda July

Happy Birthday, Miranda July, born 15 February 1974.

Quotes

The things keeping you back-these embarrassing, boring, stupid obstacles-are the heart of what it is to be human. They’re the whole reason for making and needing art. So you might as well go ahead and begin in whatever way you can right now.
That’s the artist’s job, really: continually setting yourself free, and giving yourself new options and new ways of thinking about things.
I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.
I was a lot dumber when I was writing the novel. I felt like worse of a writer because I wrote many of the short stories in one sitting or over maybe three days, and they didn’t change that much. There weren’t many, many drafts. That made me feel semi-brilliant and part of a magical process. Writing the novel wasn’t like that. I would come home every day from my office and say, ‘Well, I still really like the story, I just wish it was better written.’ At that point, I didn’t realise I was writing a first draft. And the first draft was the hardest part.
My job is to have new ideas and take risks every day, so I’m always looking forward to the next thing being done or making the next thing that I haven’t yet gotten to. That’s sort of the constant in my life.

Miranda July is an American writer, filmmaker, and artist. Her most recent book is The First Bad Man, a novel. July’s collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in twenty-three countries. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. It Chooses You was her first book of nonfiction.