Humorous writing is often thought of as substandard in comparison to work with a more dramatic or tragic intent. I don't know what to say to this except that I disagree wholeheartedly.
I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice.
The initial spark, your affection for the characters, all those things can disappear. It's a perilous thing.
The reason I like Portland is the idea of going to a supermarket and knowing there's no way to be recognized. L.A. is so social.
I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it.
'The Sisters Brothers' has endeared so many prize juries because the Western format has more of a broad appeal and is familiar to readers.
A lot of my favourite books - I should say, not much happens in the books! It's much more about the points of view of the author more than anything else.
The idea is this: It's important to upset one's work habits, to topple the cart for each project.
If I were to continue to work in an established mode, it stands to reason the work would be limited by this - that it would never surpass the prior work in quality.
I carry a small spiral notebook with me at all times and have been doing this for many years. There's a shoe box in my closet filled with these notebooks, each riddled with notes and impressions, ideas, schemes, and soup recipes.
I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing.
I haven't read a lot of Westerns. But I wrote a Western. The influences were all cinematic.
At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.
Every industry has slack times, and everyone has bad days at work.
I understand the desire to write and read about the death of publishing. It's a perversely and universally appealing topic.
I've stopped reading about the death of books because it's wasteful and morbid and insulting to the authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, critics, and readers that keep the world community of fiction interesting.
I've got a publicist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who's been working little miracles for me, but it's true the budgets aren't what they once were in terms of advertisement and book tours.
