Min Jin Lee

And at that point, I didn't have a contract.

I didn't have an agent.

I had just really no idea how to even go about this.

But I just knew that I had these books and I was going to write them.

And with each additional year of delay, the more humiliated I became and I became more private.

But I really worked actually much harder.

You stated that it took a lot of courage for you to even say you were a writer, but you had to inhabit that identity in your mind in order to accomplish your goals.

And I was really fascinated by that.

You had to inhabit this identity in order to accomplish what you needed to.

How did you go about doing that?

I think I've always been a person who lives in her mind and in her imagination and it's something that I've always known about myself is that perhaps I didn't have a lot of friends and perhaps I didn't have a lot of money or status or power but I always felt deeply rich in my mind.

I did.

I still do.

I feel like I have a lot of inner resources.

Yeah, in that sense, I feel really strong.

I feel like you really can't knock me in certain parts of myself.

You can tell me that I'm not beautiful or I'm not important.

But I'm thinking, well, yeah, you and everybody else might think that.

That's fine.

But there's a part of me that feels like, but I can make something beautiful.