WRITERS ASK ISSUE 81 EXCERPTS
Pay attention to what "default sense" you may use, and try to break out of the habit whenever possible. Smell, in particular, can be incredibly evocative when written well. Think about temperature, ambient sounds, the feel of the ground, the taste of the air. —Abby Geni
You feel that friction between the worldview of the Hemingwayesque world, and the world that you are feeling in your gut. You go, "I'm not doing this anymore. I'm going to find my real thing even if it's sort of disappointing. I'm going to go off and find it." —George Saunders
I think it's beautiful and terrifying at the same time, because it's easier to not believe in things, in a way. To decide these possibilities don't exist, that there aren't things out there, that there's only daily reality. So I think there's a beauty to people who do live in the world with imagination, and who embrace the mystery of the world at large. —Laura van den Berg
The myth of exoticism is busted immediately when you go to Calcutta, India, and ask someone there to tell you what's exotic, and they'll say, "Iowa!" Every place that is not yours is exotic. Every representation of the other is exotic. —Bob Shacochis
Frank's point was: Don't sequester yourself away. Live your life. Your fiction will ooze forward out of all that clay. —Josh Rolnick
I know that when I am reading I want to write more. I know that when I'm writing I want to read more. Words beget words. You'll never get through them all, and thus you'll never run out. I find a great deal of comfort in that. —Dan Murphy