I Always Worry That Knowing Too Much

I Think That The Way That I Write Stories Is By Instinct. You Have Some Basic Ideas - A Character, Or An Image, Or A Situation That Sounds Compelling - And Then You Just Feel Your Way Around Until You Find The Edges Of Your Story. It's Like Going Into A Dark Room... You Stumble Around Until You Find The Walls And Then Inch Your Way To The Light Switch.

I Usually Have More Than One Thing I'm Working On At Once - I've Been Working On Three Different Novels. When I Get Stuck On One, I Hop Back And Forth.

The Danger In Writing About A World You Don't Know Very Well Is That You Can Get Lost In It, And Sometimes I'll End Up With A Hundred Pages I Don't Know What To Do With.

I'm Certainly Very Influenced By What You Would Call "contemporary Headline Horror," Stuff That Is True Crime Or For One Reason Or Another Catches Our Attention In The Media, Those Strange Cases That We End Up Obsessing About. I'm Always Influenced By Weird Anecdotes And News. And, You Know, Lastly, Probably Things That Have Happened To Me In My Own Life.

I Never Could Figure Out How Those People Like Bukowski Could Be Both Carousers And Writers At The Same Time, Because To Me Writing Takes As Much Destructive Energy As It Takes To Be A Really Good Professional Drunk.