Once, I thought I had a novel, and it turned out it was only a short story. I wrote about 800 pages, but it ended up being a short story. And if it ever happens to me again, I Will Go Insane.
I love teaching. If I made a trillion dollars, I would still teach. It's different every day. You get to meet intelligent people all the time - or at least most of the time.
In every circumstance, all my life, my mind shows me the possible bad outcome: someone walks down steps, and before I can do anything to head the image off, I see a fall, a catastrophe.
Read the writers whose work is still around and has survived the winds of fashion and the attacks of the ignorant and the bigoted - read everything you can get your hands on.
Write a little bit every day, each day. Visit it, every day - in other words, show up for work.
Every really good book was written a little at a time, over time, in tremendous confusion and doubt.
The fact is, for all the critics' talk about me as a realist, I'm making everything up - everything. It is all about imagining with me.
Keep everything in context, and try to have each line doing more than one thing - not just giving exposition but also revealing character and history, etc.
I always write stories, and I write poems, too. I just never sell them to anybody, but I write them. They're good, too. They never leave the house. They're too disclosing.
