The entirety of 'Bellocq's Ophelia' was a project, and I was interested in doing research and looking at photographs and writing about them, imagining this woman Ophelia and what her life was like and the kinds of things she thought about.
The major tragedies in life, there's just no compensation. But the minor ones you can always write about. It's my way of dealing, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than psychiatrists. The story, you see, will get you through.
I don't think you ever stop giving. I really don't. I think it's an on-going process. And it's not just about being able to write a check. It's being able to touch somebody's life.
Lots of people can write a good first page but to sustain it, that's my litmus test. If I flip to the middle of the book and there's a piece of dialogue that's just outstanding, or a description, then I'll flip back to the first page and start it.
You must never lose that touch of childishness. You need it if you wish to write for children, if you wish to understand the heart of a child. Children are good, you see. And they expect good.
I was always told you're not going to make much money from writing. You can actually do it. Now I've built a really good, big house out of words.
I didn't leave Wall Street because the work was against my nature - I do have a pretty good head for numbers. I left because I had this love for writing.
Well, I've always been a character actor, you know, and you always get your share of character actors who are bad guys. So it never surprises me. And if it's good writing, you can find your way into the part well enough.
I think because I try to keep things as real as I can, or I try to start from a place of reality, I almost don't have the imagination to write a book that's not set where I am.
I have always thought that the place where you sleep or the place you share with your partner should be separate from the place where you write. The domestic rituals and details somehow kill the imagination. They kill the demon in me.
I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose.
Suddenly the whole imagination of writing and editorial and newspaper and all these presumptions about who am I reading this, and who else other people may be, and all that, it's so grimly brutal!
I was a shy child, and when I was 13, I started wearing braces on my teeth. I used to be acutely self-conscious, and I think writing was a way of withdrawing into my own imagination.
The problem with the literary hothouse of New York City is that people spend so much time looking in the mirror. They go to parties with people who are just like them, and they write novels about people who are just like them. It's limiting.
Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction.
Well, of course it was a very trying time for me, and fortunately I had a lot of people who were supportive. A lot of people who were writing and calling and saying they were praying for me. Some people sent me Scripture, and that helped.
Most of the time I feel stupid, insensitive, mediocre, talentless and vulnerable - like I'm about to cry any second - and wrong. I've found that when that happens, it usually means I'm writing pretty well, pretty deeply, pretty rawly.
I write by stealing time. The hours in the day have never felt as if they belonged to me. The greatest number has belonged to my day job as a physician and professor of medicine - eight to 12 hours, and even more in the early days.
When the babies were very young, I found it difficult to write. I told myself each time that it would be different, I was used to it now, but with every child, for the first four months, I would accomplish nothing.
I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.
And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.
