Mary Pipher:

Writers tend to be sensitive people, and yet to write we need to be tough. Change writers in particular require a certain solidarity to deal with adversity....When we write about important issues, we will inevitably be challenged. Others will feel equally passionately about these issues, but from the opposite points of view. To manage the intense reactions of others, we "need to put the footsteps of courage into the stirrups of patience," as explorer and writer Ernest Shackleton put it.

Writing to Change the World, p. 78