Shirley Geok-Lin Lim is one of my CCS Professors. Our class had lunch the other day and talked about writing. Here are some of her thoughts.

On balancing:

“I do this little dance. I’m a teacher nine to ten hours a day, but I’ll only be a poet for five minutes. It’s wrong. I either have to quit teaching to be a poet, or quit poetry to be a teacher.”

On the muse:

“The muse does not wait for you. If you say I’ll come back later, she’ll say goodbye. See you.”

On guilt:

“It’s always the back of my mind, that I could be writing more. I would write better if I gave it more time. It’s a nagging sense, an uncomfortable sense. Like I’m breaking promises.”

On professors:

“Some people get older and become calloused. Fossils. We need young people to keep us going.”