Amy Tan on writing The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan was on holiday when the news of her mother's heart attack arrived. The fear that she had lost her for ever made the stories pour out

• Amy Tan
• The Guardian, Tuesday 19 November 2013 

‘The stories poured out. They were what I felt and had to say before it was too late’ … Amy Tan. Photograph: Bobby Bank/WireImage

I was a relative latecomer to writing fiction seriously – 35 when I attended my first fiction writers' workshop. A published writer named Molly Giles critiqued my 13-page story, informing me that I had not written a story. It had no consistent voice or storyline, but the beginnings of about a dozen stories and voices. And some of what I had written felt true and other bits were false. She circled the sentences: "There's one. There's another. Here's another. Pick one and start over."

Instead of being dismayed that she had uncovered so many flaws, I felt my life change course. I could see the possibilities. Voice! Story! Truth! I had found my reason to write: the excitement of seeing the world both enlarged and with greater detail. I made a pledge to myself to write fiction for the rest of my life – that is, when I was not busy with my freelance business writing, which, at the time, averaged 90 hours a week. I was a practical person. I knew I still had to earn money.
Fiction writing would earn me nothing but personal satisfaction. I gave myself a modest goal to be published in a literary magazine by the age of 70.
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