There Is Your Car And The Open

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.

When I Was Younger I Was Attracted To People Who Had That Kind Of Artifice - People Who Were Incredibly Polished And Had A Complex Persona That Always Seemed To Be Turned On. I Was Really Interested In These Kinds Of People Because I Felt So Unformed.

There Is A Stage You Reach, Deagle Thinks, A Time Somewhere In Early Middle Age, When Your Past Ceases To Be About Yourself. Your Connection To Your Former Life Is Like A Dream Or Delirium, And That Person Who You Once Were Is Merely A Fond Acquaintance, Or A Beloved Character From A Storybook. This Is How Memory Becomes Nostalgia. They Are Two Very Different Things - The Same Way That A Person Is Different From A Photograph Of A Person.

You Can Recognize In Your Own Reading Habits What Writers Are Doing That Works And What Doesn't. I'm Becoming Much More Aware Of That After Reading A Decade Of Student Stories.

That's How I Work, Whether With Stories Or Novels - They Start With An Image That Comes To Me In A Daydream, And A Lot Of Times I'm Walking Around With These Pictures In My Head For Awhile Before I Start Writing.