The Truth Doesn't Always Make A Good

Nothing Is Wrong With You. You're Not Different. Everybody Feels As Bad As You Do: This Is Just What Writing A Novel Feels Like. To Write A Novel Is To Come In Contact With Raw, Primal Feelings, Hopes And Longings And Psychic Wounds, And Try To Make A Big Public Word-sculpture Out Of Them, And That Is A Crazy Hard Thing To Do.

I've Only Read Three Books By Stephen King. When I Was 10 I Read 'the Long Walk,' One Of His Pseudonymous Bachman Books. In My Early 20s, While Trapped On A Family Vacation, I Read 'the Dark Half,' Which Taught Me A Word I Have Never Forgotten: Psychopomp. Now I Have Read '11/22/63.'

You Don't Want To Move Toward Some Utopian Literary Situation Where Everybody's Free Of All Conventions. That's Ridiculous! Conventions Are What You Need. You Have Nothing To Break Down If You Don't Have Conventions.

And I'm Not As Young As I Once Was. At My Age, I Don't Have Time To Be Bored.

It's Very Important, At Least To Me As A Writer, That There Be Some Rules On The Table When I'm Writing. Rules Come From Genres. You're Writing In A Genre, There Are Rules, Which Is Great Because Then You Can Break The Rules. That's When Really Exciting Things Happen.