Even with an assignment, I take over, I find a freedom and make the idea my own, and that's where you get the sense that the essays become something very different than the original subject. Assignments are great, though - they test your mettle, your spirit and resilience. All of sudden you drop in, you don't know anything, you're vulnerable and available.

I have lots of fiction in the drawer, but the essays I mostly kick out into the world, ready or not. Fiction incubates differently, I suppose.

Behind each piece, animating every attempt, is the echo of a precarious faith, that we are more intimately bound to one another by our kindred doubts than our brave conclusions.

My instinct tells me "purpose" is maybe the enemy of a good personal essay. In my own experience, I'm always lost and wandering and searching - where am I? how'd I get in this mess? what's the point? - right through to the final draft, and sometimes even beyond that - baffled and defeated still, confused as to purpose long after the thing's in print. I never really have a guiding purpose or a point, not at the outset, anyway. It's like life: It's all discovered en route.

I like the desperado aspect of essays, the free lance, that mercenary kind of thing, so I just do it, without asking anyone's permission. I've never written a query letter, I don't pitch pieces, I have no market in mind, I don't spend any time trying to figure out where I might fit in.

Even with an assignment, I take over, I find a freedom and make the idea my own, and that's where you get the sense that the essays become something very different than the original subject. Assignments are great, though - they test your mettle, your spirit and resilience. All of sudden you drop in, you don't know anything, you're vulnerable and available.

What the nostalgic past and the imaginary future seem to share in common is a form of idealism, perhaps a dream of wholeness. Our future is just as goopy with sentiment as our past. To me, they're the same, both very tempting, and I don't believe in either, although the idealism is probably important.