Because Nothing Is As Perfect As You

Some Stories, She’d Say, The More You Tell Them, The Faster You Use Them Up. Those Kind, The Drama Burns Off, And Every Version, They Sound More Silly And Flat. The Other Kind Of Story, It Uses You Up. The More You Tell It, The Stronger It Gets. Those Kind Of Stories Only Remind You How Stupid You Were. Are. Will Always Be.

Any Time Some Well-meaning Person Forces You To Demonstrate You Have No Talent And Rubs Your Nose In The Fact You're A Failure At The Only Dream You Ever Had, Take Another Drink.

I Want To Have Your Abortion.

I'm Always Looking For Context In Which People Tell Stories. In "fight Club" It's These Support Groups For Dying People, And Then In "choke" It's 12-step Recovery Groups. In One Novel It's Artists' Colonies, In Another Novel It's A Diary Form That Submariners' Wives Typically Keep So That When Their Husband Comes Back From Serving On A Submarine They Have An Accounting Of Their Spouse's Time. So I'm Always Looking For, Number One, A Non-fiction Context - Because You Can Tell A More Outrageous Story If You Use A Non-fiction Form.

The Short Stories Tend To Be A Journalistic Gathering Of Anecdotes That Are Put Together To Make Something Larger.