A lot of politics in art is just institutional critique, which, in my opinion, is not all that political.
I am occasionally enraptured by Western landscape. But I don't identify that state of mind as having to do with my own origins, having grown up in the West, although I certainly crisscrossed Nevada countless times growing up, and then as a young adult, in cars and on motorcycles.
I was very precocious when I was young. I went to college at 16, and I graduated at 20. I wanted to be a writer, but I was more interested in experience than in applying myself intellectually.
I didn't do a masters in creative writing until I was 26, which is quite old, and then I found myself in New York and I needed money, so I started working full time as an editor.
Eventually, I decided that if I was going to really write a novel, I couldn't do it in New York City while holding down a job. You need a constant money source to live in New York City unless you're independently wealthy, which I'm not.
L.A. is a great place to write because you have a lot of space. I have a big office at home, I can leave the doors open. Flowers bloom all year. But it's unglamorous in all the right ways.
It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.
Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.
Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.
Citizenship and ethnicity can become, in certain contexts, restrictive, and perhaps that's one reason I was interested in people who feel compelled to mask their origins and thereby circumvent the restrictions.
I know there are writers who like to say that every novel is hard, and it doesn't get easier. That may be the case, and I've only written two. But the first, to me, was characterized by an enduring oscillation between perseverance and a profound doubt.
One is sometimes meant to reassure the reader that she's qualified to write about a certain topic.
I have never liked the 'Been there done that' thing... You hear that all the time from people, and I think it's just based on pure insecurity... Each person is going to have their own unique take on something.