Here's my theory: I think both fiction and role-playing games involve a narrative journey. When that journey never ends, it feeds an addictive cycle. When that journey has an end, it brings us back to ourselves and to our own lives. This return allows us to reflect. Perhaps this is why I prefer a closed structure for books and games.

I do think some games are works of art, although their medium is visual rather than verbal. Both games and novels allow the reader/player to become a protagonist in the theater of the imagination. Both build worlds. In my opinion, the big difference between game and novel is in narrative structure. Communal role-playing games are open-plan without an end. A novel - at least the kind I write - has a closed structure with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I like that closed structure, and I feel I can say more with it.

The new one actually reads, but only to pass judgment. This is the way kids learn today. Someone told them how you feel is more important than what you know, and so they think accusations are ideas. This is political correction run amok.

For many American-Jewish writers, the dominant motifs have been cultural, secular, sometimes comic, often satirical. Writing about the religious component of Judaism, I found my own themes independent of the New York experience and the immigrant experience.

Here's my theory: I think both fiction and role-playing games involve a narrative journey. When that journey never ends, it feeds an addictive cycle. When that journey has an end, it brings us back to ourselves and to our own lives. This return allows us to reflect. Perhaps this is why I prefer a closed structure for books and games.

I think poetry bridges text and image. Poetry is visual in its imagery - but it requires close attention to words themselves. Words become jewels in poetry, while they are often tools in other genres.

Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.