I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

Try to be accurate about stuff.

I do wish I could write like some of the American women, who can be clever and heartfelt and hopeful; people like Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan. But Ireland messed me up too much, I think, so I can't.

Sometimes I will spend two or three days not speaking to anyone outside of the immediate family when they come home, and then I find that I've been emailing like fury. Once you give in to that silence, it's quite nice.

Story is about pulling the reader in and a plot is a more externalized mechanism of revelation. A plot is more antic, more performative, and less intimate. When you're telling a story you're telling it into someone's ear.

I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

I think writers worry that you might not exist in some strange way if you're not writing.