A Conclusion Is Simply The Place Where

I Keep A Daily Journal Of Whatever Weird Thought Comes Into My Mind, Like When I Had A Dream I Was In North Dakota In The Middle Of A Blizzard And For Some Reason The Egyptian Pyramids Were There, Too - That I Was Able To Shuffle Into The Book.

I Usually Have More Than One Thing I'm Working On At Once -- I've Been Working On Three Different Novels. When I Get Stuck On One, I Hop Back And Forth. It's Sort Of Freeing: I Can Say I'm Abandoning This Thing That I Hate Forever And I'm Moving On To Something That's Good. I'll Find That I'll Go Back To [the Other Project] In A Day Or A Week And Like It Again. But That Moment Of Wanting To Trash Something -- That Virginia Woolf Moment When You Have To Be Stopped From Filling Your Pocket With Stones -- Comes Pretty Regularly For Me. Switching Is Probably A Good Thing.

How Can You Come To Understand Your Life When Even The Beginning Is So Complicated: A Single Cell Imprinted With The Color Of Your Eyes And The Shape Of Your Face The Pattern On Your Palm And The Moods That Will Shadow You Through Your Life. How Can You Be Alive When Every Choice You Make Breaks The World Into A Thousand Filaments Each Careless Step Branching Into Long Tributaries Of Alternate Lives Shuddering Outward And Outward Like Sheet Lightning.

A Novel Requires A Certain Kind Of World Building And Also A Certain Kind Of Closure, Ultimately. Whereas With A Short Story You Have This Sense That There Are Hinges That The Reader Doesn't See. I Would Say That All Short Stories Have Mystery Naturally Built Into Them.

I Never Wanted To Get To A Point In My Life Where I Knew What Was Going To Happen Next. I Felt Like Most People Just Couldn't Wait Until They Found Themselves Settled Down Into A Routine And They Didn't Have To Think About The Next Day, Or The Next Year, Or The Next Decade Because It Was All Planned Out For Them. I Can't Understand How People Can Settle For Having Just One Life.