I Think Tone Gives Birth To The

In The Army You Feel Violated - There's No Private Space. Writing Was A Life-saver, A Way Of Recovering Private Territory.

Sometimes, When You Are In A Really Constrained Situation, It Makes You More Focused About What You Want To Say And Where You're Heading. The Most Beautiful Love Poems That Were Ever Written Are Sonnets, Composed In A Very Constraining Form.

Writing Is Very Castrating In The Moment. Fiction In General, It Has No Function, Nobody Asks For It.

I Often Give This Metaphor Where I Say That Writing Short Fiction Is Like Surfing, While Writing A Novel Is Like Navigating With Your Car. So When You Navigate With Your Car, You Want To Get Somewhere. When You Surf, You Don't Want To Get Somewhere, You Just Don't Want To Fall Off Your Board.

It's Kind Of A Reflex For Me To Ignore My Own Wishes And Think About Other People First.