I’m standing by books because they offer writers the space to dig in, to see if formal innovations and experiments can hold up, and provide the space for authors to take ideas to their limits.
I want vicarious immersion in a novel; I don’t wan’t to continue the sort of emotional performativity social media require.
I love the mediated intimacy of the internet, and the way it enables an aspect of me to have a relationship with aspects of a lot of other people.
I think that writing becomes significant through labor. The cherished things online, whether they be profitable or not, clearly spring from a place of great effort, even if in the end that effort is, as it usually should be, invisible.
The fiction writer, at least, creates the lie to contain the truth.
I started writing because I was tired of considering my own reality. Anyone should be able to write about anything they want, regardless of where they’ve been or where they are now.
This is hardly a tragedy, I realize, and hardly original, but until Hollywood kicked me hard in the nuts I’d always thought that I would succeed massively at whatever I tried.
The business of writing is contingent on the tastes and judgment of others. Editors, critics, Oprah. Again, we adapt to tune it all out.
When you get right down to it, is that I have an overactive dreamlife, and instead of letting it stunt my emotional growth, alienate others, and compromise my sanity, I write.
A writer’s life is full of moments when you feel you’re starting from absolute scratch.