We Need The Skeletons Of Other Stories

I Feel Like In American Fiction We're Moving Out Of A Period Of Intense Irony, And I'm Very Glad About That. I Feel Like Irony Is Fine For Its Own Sake But Shouldn't Be The Sole Reason To Write A Book. It Has Been An Ironic World View: That's The Best Way I Can Describe It. I'm A Fan Of Earnestness. I Feel Like There's A New Wave Of Earnestness And I'd Be Happy If I'm Some Small Part Of That.

I Like People, I Really Do. I Like Meeting People. But Most Of The Time I Would Rather Be At Home Reading A Book Than Reading In A Bookstore. It's A Performance, And It Ends Up Being All Right, And Then You Have A Nice Shot Of Bourbon Afterwards, And It's All Good. I Want To Please People. I Want To Be Nice. I Want To Be Liked. As A Result I Say Yes To Everything. But It Takes A Lot Of Vital Energy Out Of Me.

I Do Like Twitter. Writing Is A Solitary Pursuit, And It Can Get Lonely. I Like To Go Into Twitter For A Short Period Of Time, Communicate With Clever Friends, And Then Switch It Off. That's Perfect For Me.

When I Write A New Draft, I Don't Like To Feel I'm Tied To Any Previous Version. That's Why I Don't Use A Computer To Write. The Text Looks, On The Screen, Too Much Like A Book. It's Not A Book - It's A Bad First Draft Of Something That Could One Day Be A Book.

Even Still, We Run. We Have Not Reached Our Average Of 57.92 Years Without Knowing That You Run Through It, And It Hurts And You Run Through It Some More, And If It Hurts Worse, You Run Through It Even More, And When You Finish, You Will Have Broken Through. In The End, When You Are Done, And Stretching, And Your Heartbeat Slows, And Your Sweat Dries, If You've Run Through The Hard Part, You Will Remember No Pain.