Life Is Fundamentally Up For Grabs

As Much As I Care About Historical Context - I'm Very Eager To Read A Really Great Historical Account.

I Have A Horror Of Silence While I'm Writing. It's Like The Universe Is Howling At Me If I Don't Have It.

The Arts And A Belief In The Values Of The Civil Rights Movement, In The Overwhelming Virtue Of Diversity, These Were Our Religion. My Parents Worshipped Those Ideals.

I've Been An Advocate Against The View Of The Writer As A Partitioned Genius Hanging In Conceptual Space, Or Up On A Mountain, A Bringer Of Promethean Fire, Some Unique Transmission That Comes Out Of Nowhere. I Prefer The Opposite View - That Writers Come From Somewhere. They Read Things, And They Think About Them, And They Incorporate Other People's Thoughts.

I've Discovered That Like Every Writer, I'm Helpless Myself - And That Means I Find Myself Unconsciously Or Semi-consciously Repeating Motifs And Themes And Even Using Certain Words Or Images Recurrently In My Work, No Matter How Much I Think I'm Starting Fresh. But I've Always Admired Artists Who Made A Specific Sport Of Trying To Visit Different Kinds Of Genres Or Mediums Or Modes - Not Just 'western' Or 'detective', But Comedy/tragedy, Epic And Miniature, Traditional/experimental.