If No One Knows You, Then You

You Know, The Biggest Indicator Of Where You Live Is Your Income. If You Live In This Suburb You Make This Much Money, And If You Live In That Suburb, You Make That Much Money, And If You Don't Have Any Money You Live Where You're Allowed To Live.

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. It's Sort Of Freeing: I Can Say I'm Abandoning This Thing That I Hate Forever And I'm Moving On To Something That's Good. I'll Find That I'll Go Back To [the Other Project] In A Day Or A Week And Like It Again. But That Moment Of Wanting To Trash Something -- That Virginia Woolf Moment When You Have To Be Stopped From Filling Your Pocket With Stones -- Comes Pretty Regularly For Me. Switching Is Probably A Good Thing.

A Novel Requires A Certain Kind Of World-building And Also A Certain Kind Of Closure, Ultimately. Whereas With A Short Story You Have This Sense That There Are Hinges That The Reader Doesn't See.

I'd Read An Enormous Amount But Had Spent So Much Time In My Own Head That I Didn't Have Extensive Social Skills. Suddenly I Was In This World Where I Was Surrounded By These Incredibly Polished And Wealthy Kids Who Had Gone To Prep Schools, And I Felt Daunted By Them. I Don't Think People Were Aware Of How Full Of Anxiety I Was... For A Long Time I Felt Like I Was Living In A Place Where I Shouldn't Have Been.

A Lot Of Time, With Stories, I'll Start Out With A Title And Try To Dream Myself Into The Story That It Evokes - A Kind Of Subconscious Exercise In Which I'm Trawling For Some Kind Of Entryway Into Fiction.