Write What You Care About.

I Believe That To Create Real-seeming Characters, The Writer Must Be Willing To Go On A Voyage Of Self-exploration. It Can Be Revealing And Even Painful To Explore Your Own Weakness, But It Gives You Genuine Emotion. Characters In Fiction Come Alive Because Of The Believability Of Their Emotional Lives And That Is What I Strive To Create.

While We Were Walking Around, We Came To The Catholic Church, And We Saw That Some People Had Set Fire To Carpets And Banked Them Around The Rectory, Which Was Made Out Of Wood. They Knew Every Fire Truck On The South Side Was Going To Be In The Park, That The Rectory Would Just Burn To The Ground. Our One Little Act Was Putting Out That Fire.

I Went To College At The University Of Kansas, Where I Got A Degree In Political Science.

Organizer Is Kind Of A Grand Term For What I Was Doing. I Answered An Ad That The Presbyterian Church Of Chicago Put Up On College Campuses. I Was At The University Of Kansas, And It's Somewhat Relevant To My Life And Work That I'm A Jew. But They Weren't Doing A Religious Litmus Test. They Wanted Energetic, Civil-rights-committed College Students To Come Help Them Run Some Summer Programs.

The Decimation Of Lebanon Was Showing Up In Chicago As A Series Of Restaurants And Little Shops, Just As The Destruction Of Vietnam Had Been Visible Here A Decade Earlier. If You Never Read The News But Ate Out A Lot You Should Be Able To Tell Who Was Getting Beaten Up Around The World.