A female writer does definitely get more attention if she writes about male characters. It's true. It's considered somehow more literary, in the same way that it's more literary to write about supposedly male subjects, such as war. You're considered more seriously by the literary establishment.
I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against.
It's wonderful that nothing you write is ever going to be as beautiful as what's in your head, because that gap is where the art can enter and begin to stretch its limbs.
In terms of writing, I think what most fiction writers treasure more than anything is the feeling that they're living for the length of a book inside another person.
Fiction is always a utopian task, in that there's an ideal you hold in your head as you write which inevitably fails in the moment of creation, in the insufficiency of words to convey meaning, or in the way the work is completed in the reader's head.
Writing by hand is a way of letting mystery into my writing. But I'm constantly trying to figure out how to do this job. It's a work in progress.
I feel like in American fiction we're moving out of a period of intense irony, and I'm very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but shouldn't be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that's the best way I can describe it. I'm a fan of earnestness. I feel like there's a new wave of earnestness and I'd be happy if I'm some small part of that.
When I write a new draft, I don't like to feel I'm tied to any previous version. That's why I don't use a computer to write. The text looks, on the screen, too much like a book. It's not a book - it's a bad first draft of something that could one day be a book.
It's more like I write multiple first drafts, handwritten. So with my first novel, I wrote whole drafts from different points of view. There are different versions of that novel in a drawer on loose-leaf sheets. I won't even look at the first draft while I'm writing the second, and I won't look at the second before writing the third.
I do like Twitter. Writing is a solitary pursuit, and it can get lonely. I like to go into Twitter for a short period of time, communicate with clever friends, and then switch it off. That's perfect for me.
Even the presence of my kids cannot, during those writing hours, disturb me. Unless there's a bone sticking out of their arm, I'm not interested.
At least in my case, a very simple, regular, happy life makes for better writing.
I feel lucky. I do love it, mostly. At college I had it in my heart that I wanted to be a writer but I didn't want to tell anyone about it. Then I graduated and became a bartender in Philadelphia, writing during the day. I was the worst bartender in the world.
I had a series of terrible jobs, whatever would allow me to write for four hours during the day. During that time I wrote three novels - all of which were extraordinarily poor. I decided after that to go and get my MFA.
I'm a writer, not an actor. I want to write rather than perform. I'm looking forward to disappearing for a while.
I'm a physical learner. I learn from writing drafts, not reading them.
Writing is the lonely sport of sad sacks.
A lot of my work comes from a place of despair or fear. I often write in order to gain some sort of control over aspects of my life or the world that seem too dark to look at directly.
The triumph of writing fiction is that by doing so, writers can build a more ideal world in themselves.
I like writing dialogue - I can hear my characters so clearly that writing dialogue often feels as much like transcribing something as it does like creating it.
I've found a bit of success in my career, and I'm very relieved by it, but the success that comes after a book is published is never as happy as the feeling of writing, of knowing you've written something good, of feeling like you've had a worthwhile day in the chair. That's the best feeling I know, and as soon as writing stops making me feel that way, I'll stop doing it.
I write with the idea that nobody will care about what I've written; I publish with the idea that nobody will care either. Which is why every time somebody cares enough to read a novel of mine, or respond to it - a reader, a reviewer, even my own editor - I'm a little bit amazed, and so hugely grateful.
Actors should ACT. Not sell perfume, or write cookbooks.
Writing a memoir isn't particularly interesting to me. I'm not like Ellen [DeGeneres], where I can write, 'Water bottles--they're crazy!' and it's funny.
Write words you’re willing to burn at the stake for. Write words you’d believe in even if the rest of the world didn’t.
