Aging & Wisdom Quote by Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee slips a scalpel into a comfort-blanket cliche and lets it bleed just enough to show what’s underneath. “Writers tell stories better” concedes craft without mystifying it: not divine gift, not special bloodline, just “more practice.” That word does the real work. It flattens the romantic myth of the author into something almost athletic - repetition, failure, muscle memory. Coming from a prolific genre writer who spent decades producing novels, short fiction, and mythic reinaginings, it reads like a professional quietly defending labor in a culture that loves effortless genius.

Then she swerves: “but everyone has a book in them.” She doesn’t reject the cliche; she repeats it with a wink: “Yes, that old cliche.” The tag is both concession and critique. Lee recognizes why the saying persists - it’s democratic, flattering, a little intoxicating. But by naming it as a cliche, she also implies its hidden trap: having a story isn’t the same as shaping one. The subtext is a polite gatekeeping, or maybe an anti-gatekeeping with terms and conditions. Everyone may possess raw material - grief, obsession, a secret decade, a strange job - yet the difference between lived experience and a readable book is the grind of revision, structure, and voice.

Her intent feels two-pronged: encourage the amateur without lying to them. You can do it, she suggests, but you don’t get to pretend it’s magic. In that tension sits the real generosity of the line.