Uninvited criticism is insult.

Uninvited criticism is insult.

Nothing on earth in fiction is less interesting than characters under the influence of alcohol.

Obscenities are too often used for shock value, as a kind of shorthand for real expression of emotion. You've got to scale down your monstrosities. A scream is not a discovery.

Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters.

Plot does not simply move with time, but spreads out conceptually in metaphorical space.

A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience... Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.