A Small Profit Is Better Than A

I Think I Had A Particular Moment When I Was 15 Years Old. I Read 'crime And Punishment,' And That Book Just, I Think, More Than Any Other Book Made Me Want To Be A Writer, 'cause It Was The First Time That I Hadn't Just Entered A Book, But A Book Had Entered Me.

I Usually Do At Least A Dozen Drafts And Progressively Make More-conscious Decisions. Because I've Always Believed Stories Are Closer To Poems Than Novels, I Spend A Lot Of Time On The Story's Larger Rhythms, Such As Sentence And Paragraph Length, Placement Of Flashbacks And Dialogue.

Intensely Moving But Never Sentimental, Academy Street Is A Profound Meditation On What Faulkner Called 'the Human Heart In Conflict With Itself'. In Tess Lohan, Mary Costello Has Created One Of The Most Fully Realized Characters In Contemporary Fiction. What A Marvel Of A Book.

On The Last Drafts, I Focus On The Words Themselves, Including The Rub Of Vowels And Consonants, Stressed And Unstressed Syllables. Yet Even At This Stage I'm Often Surprised. A Different Ending Or A New Character Shows Up And I'm Back To Where I Began, Letting The Story Happen, Just Trying To Stay Out Of The Way.

But Nothing Is Solid And Permanent. Our Lives Are Raised On The Shakiest Foundations. You Don't Need To Read History Books To Know That. You Only Have To Know The History Of Your Own Life.