I Still Think About The Writers I

I Think That The Way That I Write Stories Is By Instinct. You Have Some Basic Ideas - A Character, Or An Image, Or A Situation That Sounds Compelling - And Then You Just Feel Your Way Around Until You Find The Edges Of Your Story. It's Like Going Into A Dark Room... You Stumble Around Until You Find The Walls And Then Inch Your Way To The Light Switch.

I'm Working With Fragments A Lot Of The Time And The Connective Tissue Isn't There Yet. I Think Of It The Way Comics Work. You Have A Block Here And A Block Here, And There's This White Space In Between. Somehow Your Mind Makes The Leap To Connect Those Two Blocks. Finding A Way To Trick Your Mind Into Connecting Those Blocks Is One Of The Fun Things For Me About Writing. You Can Have Those Leaps That Will Emerge Into Something, If You're Lucky.

What If You Believed That Everything In Life Was Like A Prize? What If You Thought Of The World As A Big Random Drawing, And You Were Always Winning Things, The World Offering Them Up With A Big Grin, Like An Emcee's: Here You Go, Hollis. Here Is A Motorcycle. Here Is A Little Boy Who Loves You. Here Is A Weird Experience, Here Is Something Bad That You Should Mull Over Because It Will Make You A Better Person. What If You Could Think That Life Was This Free Vacation You'd Won, And You Won Just Because You Happened To Be Alive?

I've Never Been Able To Sleep Very Much, Even When I Was A Kid. I Used To Hate Being Forced To Lay In Bed In The Darkness, And Just Shifting In Bed And Staring At The Shadows.

Plot And Scene Are Still The Hardest Things For Me, Though I Think They're The Building Blocks Of What Makes A Story Work.