You Can't Tell People How To Feel

I Started Out As A Poet Who Primarily Wanted To Write About Image And Moment. Over The Years I've Been Trying To Teach Myself How To Do Plot And Scene. My First Story Collection Had The Most Issues With The Plotlessness, And When I Was Writing My Second Collection I Was Teaching Myself How To Make Things Happen.

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.

People Write Fiction In Their Minds All The Time - Every Time We Read A 'human Interest' News Story, Or A True Crime Tale, We Find Ourselves Fascinated Because We're Trying To Understand Why People Behave The Way They Do, Why They Make The Choices They Do, How We Become Who We Become.

Our Sense Of Self Is A Kind Of Construct. It Is In Some Ways Like A Novel, And It's Like A Fabric Of Fictions That We Patch Together From Memory.

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.