Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.
Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.
I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.
It was not in my nature to be an assertive person. I was used to looking to others for guidance, for influence, sometimes for the most basic cues of life. And yet writing stories is one of the most assertive things a person can do. Fiction is an act of willfulness, a deliberate effort to reconceive, to rearrange, to reconstitute nothing short of reality itself. Even among the most reluctant and doubtful of writers, this willfulness must emerge. Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying, "Listen to me."
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
I dream of writing a book like LOVERS some day. It is so spare but so rich. It is history made intimate, and a masterpiece of compression.
I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.
In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response.
