I'm Not A Natural Criticizer

More And More These Days What I Find Myself Doing In My Stories Is Making A Representation Of Goodness And A Representation Of Evil And Then Having Those Two Run At Each Other Full-speed, Like A Couple Of Peewee Football Players, To See What Happens. Who Stays Standing? Whose Helmet Goes Flying Off?

Realism Is To Fiction What Gravity Is To Walking: A Confinement That Allows Dancing Under The Right Circumstances.

My Idea About Collections Is That You Write As Hard As You Can For Some Period And What You're Really Doing During That Time Is Hyper-focusing On The Individual Pieces - Trying To Make Each One Sit Up And Really Do Some Surprising Work.

It's Not Fiction's Job To Be Photographically Representative Of Reality. If I Want To Make A Fictional World Where There's No Kindness, This Doesn't Mean I Believe There's No Kindness In The Real World. In Fact, What It May Mean Is That I Very Much Value Kindness. Like If You Make A Painting In Which Only Greens Are Allowed, It Wouldn't Mean You Don't Believe In Blue.

I Think When You Get To Export Your Creative Impulse Into Something, It Kind Of Lessens That Busy Energy That Can Be So Confrontational And Pissy.