There Seemed Nothing So True As A

A Novel Is A Daily Labor Over A Period Of Years. A Novel Is A Job. But A Story Can Be Like A Mad, Lovely Visitor, With Whom You Spend A Rather Exciting Weekend.

The People In This House, I Felt, And I Included Myself, Were Like Characters Each From A Different Grim And Gruesome Fairy Tale. None Of Us Was In The Same Story. We Were All Grotesques, And Self-riveted, But In Separate Narratives, And So Our Interactions Seemed Weird And Richly Meaningless, Like The Characters In A Tennessee Williams Play, With Their Bursting Unimportant, But Spell-bindingly Mad Speeches.

Perhaps One Would Be Wise When Young Even To Avoid Thinking Of Oneself As A Writer - For There's Something A Little Stopped And Satisfied, Too Healthy, In That. Better To Think Of Writing, Of What One Does As An Activity, Rather Than An Identity - To Write, I Write; We Write; To Keep The Calling A Verb Rather Than A Noun; To Keep Working At The Thing, At All Hours, In All Places, So That Your Life Does Not Become A Pose, A Pornography Of Wishing.

What Do I Do When Writing Isn't Going Well? Well, I Don't Write - Which Is Symptom, Cure, And Cause. And Then Sometimes I Just Tell Myself, As I'm Writing, "i'll Fix It Later." And Sometimes It's True, I Do.

This Is What Happened In Love. One Of You Cried A Lot And Then Both Of You Grew Sarcastic.