“A story about a beautiful day at Palisades Amusement Park is out of the ordinary,” the writer says. “It was a rare day, a wonderful day, a day when everything went right. Why isn’t that a story?”

The writer’s argument only makes our point stronger. His example can be a story. There is real tension in his re-creating that perfect day. When Wallace Stevens wrote, “Death is the mother of beauty,” I think he meant that we value beauty because we know it is fleeting—the ripe fruit will soon rot, the beautiful person will inevitably die. If with every sentence of the Palisades Park story we feel the fragility of that day’s beauty, the recognition of how exceptional it is, the way the characters transcend their everyday troubles, we feel the tension, and it will be a story.

You are interesting. Your experiences, your imagination, your perceptions, your emotions are interesting. What is closest to you is valuable for your art. Believe that. Your honesty and your talent are inseparable. Don’t falsify by conventionalizing. Your uniqueness lies not in fulfilling cultural stereotypes but in expressing what you really uncover, like it or not.