Living in the world of the workshop, which I do as a teacher, you have to be articulate about craft. And that often involves imposing analysis on work that's in a pretty raw state.
K. M. SoehnleinKnowing that we'd meet Ruby at the point where she stopped believing, I knew I was also going to have to deal with what you do with your capacity for belief if you don't have an object for your belief.
K. M. SoehnleinI have even taught classes on writing about sex, and I've looked closely at different writers' sex scenes. On the level of craft I've given it a lot of thought. The pitfalls are simple: It can sound clinical or medical, which isn't right, or pornographic, because the characters disappear.
K. M. SoehnleinNot a lot of contemporary fiction is written about brothers and sisters. Salinger's Franny and Zooey was an inspiration for me. In Franny and Zooey, the sister gets in trouble and the brother comes to help her out. But I wanted to make sure that in my novel the sister had more to do than lie around on a sofa muttering, which is what Franny does for two-thirds of Salinger's novel.
K. M. Soehnlein