Steinbeck's son on what his father said about writing

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"My father told us all the time, to become a good writer takes writing. Because the more you do it, the better you get at it. It's like bull-riding. You can't do it once, you know. You've got to practice it and practice it. So everything he wrote he thought was practice for the next one.

My father thought the most important thing of the writer to be was invisible. The book should stand out. He didn't like notoriety. He hated it. He thought, 'I've written the book. That should be enough. Leave me alone.'

His vision of what his job was, was just to do his job, and that was enough. And he felt his job was writing. But it was a job. It was his contribution to the human community. And he didn't believe he deserved any greater reward for what he did than anybody else deserved for what they did. ... My father thought of himself as a tradesman. A craftsman."

Thom Steinbeck is also a published writer.