Science & Tech Quote by Kate DiCamillo

Writing, in DiCamillo's telling, isn’t a lightning bolt. It’s a shift you drag yourself into.

The first move in the quote is almost mischievously anti-myth: she works full-time in a used bookstore, a setting people romanticize as “literary,” yet she opens with fatigue, routine, and a job that drains the day. Then comes the honest thought every aspiring writer is trained to feel guilty about: “The last thing I want to do is write.” That line punctures the idea that real writers are perpetually inspired, perpetually eager, perpetually “called.” DiCamillo doesn’t posture as someone above resistance; she makes resistance the baseline.

The subtext is pragmatic and quietly radical: wanting to write is not the prerequisite for writing. The real engine is the next sentence, blunt as a door closing: “Then I go to the computer and write.” No manifesto, no mystical muse, no aestheticized suffering. Just the unglamorous pivot from reluctance to action.

Context matters. DiCamillo built a career in children’s literature, a field often dismissed as effortless or sentimental. This quote insists on craft as labor, especially labor done in the margins of a working life. It also reframes discipline as compassion: you don’t wait to feel pure; you show up messy, tired, under-caffeinated, and you do the work anyway. The intent isn’t to inspire by fantasy. It’s to liberate by demystifying.