For Me, As A Beginning Novelist, All

I Wrote About World War Ii Because I Didn't Understand It. I Think That's The Reason That Historians Are Drawn To Any Subject - There's Something About It That Doesn't Make Sense. I Wanted To Work My Way Through What Happened Slowly, And Look At Everything In The Order In Which It Took Place.

You Can Tell It's A Poem Because It's Swimming In A Little Gel Pack Of White Space. That Shows It's A Poem.

One's Head Is Finite. You Pour More And More Things Into It - Surnames, Chronologies, Affiliations - And It Packs Them Away In Its Tunnels, And Eventually You Find That You Have A Book About Something That You Publish.

Writing Has To Do With Truth-telling. When You're Writing, Let's Say, An Essay For A Magazine, You Try To Tell The Truth At Every Moment. You Do Your Best To Quote People Accurately And Get Everything Right. Writing A Novel Is A Break From That: Freedom. When You're Writing A Novel, You Are In Charge; You Can Beef Things Up.

Spoon The Sauce Over The Ice Cream. It Will Harden. This Is What You Have Been Working For.