As a journalist, it is so easy to get hardened when you see so many stories that are disturbing. Sometimes it's just your survival mechanism that makes you hardened to some of it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think, as journalists, we sometimes are afraid to enter into the emotional lives and the complications of the lives of the people we write about - we don't really have the space and the room to deal with those things. But as a novelist, that's precisely what you're writing about.
Very often when a story really holds us, it gets pushed away because it's too close for comfort.
It's the nature of journalism to need to be close to your subjects. And either you're able to be tough on them, which a lot of us are, or you get in bed with them, and some people do.
Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.
I think the key to being a journalist is getting your subject to feel comfortable enough to talk about stuff they want to talk about and the stuff they like and don't like, and still feel comfortable about it.
The passion and knowledge of journalism as storytelling is incredibly infectious.
As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.
For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.
Stories and narratives are one of the most powerful things in humanity. They're devices for dealing with the chaotic danger of existence.
I think any journalist who spends time in a place realizes that there are lots of stories around beyond their primary story. You meet so many interesting people and have all kinds of experiences.