My writing day follows my family's day. I get a good few hours in the mornings when the kids are out of the house. And I don't work at night any more. I like to see my family.
We grow up with this idea that we're all individual agents. We work, make our money, have our place to live and our satellite TV. But whether you like it or not, you need family or community.
I don't feel uncomfortable in America, but every once in a while, I'm reminded that people don't see me the way I see me. It doesn't change my life, but it gives me a consciousness about it.
Most people don't think about race as much as I do. They don't have to.
I don't like to use writing assignments, exercises. I think too often people get comfortable writing in that vein, but you can't go on to write a novel comprised of short writing exercises.
To be honest, I'm not that much of a reader of Korean fiction, since so little is translated.
We know the point of the 2010 Census is to count us, one by one, to tally every last resident, but the massive project of course has more prying, if limited, interests.
My family immigrated when I was 3, and our predecessors inhabited the Korean Peninsula for as long as can be recalled.
As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.
We read and remember certain writers because they offer distinctive voices and perspectives, because they've given themselves over completely and passionately to their obsessions while vigorously ignoring everything else.
Before I start my work in the morning, I need to have quickly browsed the entire paper, noting articles that I want to read during lunch.
I think book clubs should read more contemporary poetry.
I don't listen to music while writing; it seems to me I'm trying to make my own kind of music, and to have anything else going on is just noisy interference.
I have a hard time revising sentences, because I spend an inordinate amount of time on each sentence, and the sentence before it, and the sentence after it.
In my other books, things do happen, but they are kind of bookends to the real action, which for me was an exploration of consciousness. Not that I don't get into the consciousness of the people in 'The Surrendered,' but you could say there's not as much anxiety about it.
I'm not the sort of writer who can plan out things. Mostly I have no idea where I'm going.
I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.
No place is perfect, but I admire Oahu for its offering of the tropical and the urban, and then its Asian-inflected culture and cuisines.
Unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Wolfe, I don't like proper dress while working. I like writing in pajama-like clothing, which eases and relaxes me and allows me to connect with the decidedly improper.
I can put together a pretty decent meal from whatever happens to be in the refrigerator and the pantry. I like the challenge of this sort of improvisation, the rigor of limitation and sometimes having to take a risk.
