I got brilliant stories from people who'd never set foot in an MFA program and had published very little, and terrible stories from people who'd published a lot and had all the credentials. It was all over the map and that was part of the fun.

The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that's about the time I started writing decent work.

If you want to write, then write; if you don't want to write, then don't write. I fell into the former category, and I just made the decision that I'd keep on because I liked it and might someday do something decent.

It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me - that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.

I think I was lucky to come of age in a place and time - the American South in the 1960s and '70s - when the machine hadn't completely taken over life. The natural world was still the world, and machines - TV, telephone, cars - were still more or less ancillary, and computers were unheard of in everyday life.

There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one.

I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.