She Was Struggling Against A Current That

As A Writer, I Am Constantly Aware That I Take My Life In My Hands With Everything I Do And Say. It's Just A Fact Of Life. For Me It Always Has Been.

I Think Fiction Allows You To Inhabit New Domains And It's You, The Reader Living In That Domain For A Few Days That Results In A Deeper Understanding As Opposed To The Novel Proclaiming This Is What It Is Right And This Is What Is Wrong.

We Are All Refugees From Our Childhoods. And So We Turn, Among Other Things, To Stories. To Write A Story, To Read A Story, Is To Be A Refugee From The State Of Refugees. Writers And Readers Seek A Solution To The Problem That Time Passes, That Those Who Have Gone Are Gone And Those Who Will Go, Which Is To Say Every One Of Us, Will Go. For There Was A Moment When Anything Was Possible. And There Will Be A Moment When Nothing Is Possible. But In Between We Can Create.

Time Is Our Most Precious Currency. So It's Significant That We Are Being Encouraged, Wherever Possible, To Think Of Our Attention Not As Expenditure But As Consumption. This Blurring Of Labor And Entertainment Forms The Basis, For Example, Of The Financial Alchemy That Conjures Deca-billion-dollar Valuations For Social-networking Companies.

I Don't Think The Function Of Writing, At Least For Me As A Fiction Writer, Is To Say To People, "here's The Answer." It's Not An Op-ed.