You Can't Tell People How To Feel

People Write Fiction In Their Minds All The Time - Every Time We Read A 'human Interest' News Story, Or A True Crime Tale, We Find Ourselves Fascinated Because We're Trying To Understand Why People Behave The Way They Do, Why They Make The Choices They Do, How We Become Who We Become.

I'm Certainly Very Influenced By What You Would Call "contemporary Headline Horror," Stuff That Is True Crime Or For One Reason Or Another Catches Our Attention In The Media, Those Strange Cases That We End Up Obsessing About. I'm Always Influenced By Weird Anecdotes And News. And, You Know, Lastly, Probably Things That Have Happened To Me In My Own Life.

There's A Lot Of Effort Expended Once You Begin To Completely Trash Your Life. Sometimes, Writing Feels Like This To Me.

I Start With An Image, Then I Go From The Image Toward Exploring The Situation. Then I Write A Scene, And From The Scene I Find The Character, From The Character I Find The Larger Plot. It's Like Deductive Reasoning - I Start With The Smaller Stuff And Work Backward.

A Lot Of Time, With Stories, I'll Start Out With A Title And Try To Dream Myself Into The Story That It Evokes - A Kind Of Subconscious Exercise In Which I'm Trawling For Some Kind Of Entryway Into Fiction.