Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try.
From Curtis Sittenfeld
It's never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it's an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man.
I just think that people are complicated, both men and women. It happens that I write more about women.
I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating.
I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors.
My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology.
In some ways I think it would be very dignified if I went away for twenty years and then wrote my fourth book.
I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself.
People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination.
I'm so trying to give up meat.
4 perspectives
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