"Depending on what I'm working on, I come to the writing desk with entirely different mindsets. When I change form one to the other, it's as if another writer is on the scene"
About this Quote
Craft isn’t a single “voice” so much as a switchboard, and Evan Hunter is blunt about the quiet split every working writer knows: the self at the desk is not stable. His line refuses the romantic myth of the author as one coherent personality pouring out “truth.” Instead, it frames writing as performance in the most practical, professional sense. You don’t “find your voice” once; you assemble it on demand.
Hunter’s choice of “form” does the heavy lifting. He’s not talking about mood swings. He’s describing how genre and medium impose different ethics, rhythms, and tolerances. A crime novel demands propulsion and surface clarity; literary realism might reward ambiguity and slower moral weather. Even sentence length changes what the mind values: speed, texture, jokes, dread. By saying “as if another writer is on the scene,” Hunter smuggles in a liberation: if the work fails, it’s not evidence of personal fraudulence; it’s the wrong operator for the job.
The context matters because Hunter lived this multiplicity. He wrote under multiple names (most famously Ed McBain) and moved between novels, screenwriting, and genre work at industrial pace. That biography turns the quote into an argument against snobbery. “Different mindsets” is also a defense of so-called commercial writing as its own discipline, not a lesser version of “real” art.
The subtext is pragmatic and slightly sly: the writer who survives is the one who can shapeshift, and who stops confusing identity with method.
Hunter’s choice of “form” does the heavy lifting. He’s not talking about mood swings. He’s describing how genre and medium impose different ethics, rhythms, and tolerances. A crime novel demands propulsion and surface clarity; literary realism might reward ambiguity and slower moral weather. Even sentence length changes what the mind values: speed, texture, jokes, dread. By saying “as if another writer is on the scene,” Hunter smuggles in a liberation: if the work fails, it’s not evidence of personal fraudulence; it’s the wrong operator for the job.
The context matters because Hunter lived this multiplicity. He wrote under multiple names (most famously Ed McBain) and moved between novels, screenwriting, and genre work at industrial pace. That biography turns the quote into an argument against snobbery. “Different mindsets” is also a defense of so-called commercial writing as its own discipline, not a lesser version of “real” art.
The subtext is pragmatic and slightly sly: the writer who survives is the one who can shapeshift, and who stops confusing identity with method.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Evan
Add to List
