Plot And Scene Are Still The Hardest

How Can You Come To Understand Your Life When Even The Beginning Is So Complicated: A Single Cell Imprinted With The Color Of Your Eyes And The Shape Of Your Face The Pattern On Your Palm And The Moods That Will Shadow You Through Your Life. How Can You Be Alive When Every Choice You Make Breaks The World Into A Thousand Filaments Each Careless Step Branching Into Long Tributaries Of Alternate Lives Shuddering Outward And Outward Like Sheet Lightning.

Fiction Is A Particular Kind Of Rhetoric, A Way Of Thinking That I Think Can Be Useful In Your Life. It Asks You To Image The World Through Someone Else's Eyes, And It Allows You To Try To Empathize With Situations That You Haven't Actually Experienced.

I Keep A Daily Journal Of Whatever Weird Thought Comes Into My Mind, Like When I Had A Dream I Was In North Dakota In The Middle Of A Blizzard And For Some Reason The Egyptian Pyramids Were There, Too - That I Was Able To Shuffle Into The Book.

I Guess I'm Curious About How People Process Grief And How They Process Loss. And I'm Also Interested In The Ways In Which An Event Can Have Long-reaching Consequences And A Life Over The Course Of Years.

I Never Could Figure Out How Those People Like Bukowski Could Be Both Carousers And Writers At The Same Time, Because To Me Writing Takes As Much Destructive Energy As It Takes To Be A Really Good Professional Drunk.