The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need.
From Jonathan Franzen
The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.
It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security Council.
It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it?
It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.
If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.
I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.
I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.
I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.
I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994.
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives