Humor Is What Happens When

I've Found That My First Drafts Are Not So Special. But The More I Work On Them, The Better They Get. They Are More Unique And Defensible.

All Along, My Mantra Was: Don't Write Unless It Contributes To The Emotion, And Do Anything You Do In Service Of The Emotion Only.

She Said America Was A Spoiled Child Ignorant Of Grief.

So Much Of What I Am Doing In My Fiction Is Just Trying To Get Into Interesting Places In Terms Of Language Or Form, Places That Don't Bore Me. And This Happens Via Hundreds Of Quick Micro-decisions That Are Done "to Taste," So To Speak. So The Experience Is One Of Groping Toward That Interesting Place - Trying To Leap Away From Anything That Seems Boring, Or About Which I Don't Have Strong Opinions. Essentially Trying To Avoid That Moment Where, Devoid Of Any Strong Feeling, I Start Conceptualizing.

Every Writer Has To Find The Thing To Keep Her Eye On About Which She Has Strong Opinions. That's Of Course Deeply Personal, But The Nice Thing Is That It Has To Do With Joy Rather Than Fear. It Has To Do With You. If You're Funny, Your Method Will Be To Try To Be Funnier. Which Again Is Empowering I Think.