What I need to write is a complicated equation. Maybe if I knew I'd be one of those writers, one of the steady ones. I rest upon my assertion that there has to be some balance of energy, or, failing a balance, a focused intensity of ALL energy. I've experienced both, I suppose.

I view my stories as sexual or personal. Curiously, I don't. When I was writing those stories I thought of them as comedy pieces in the vein of performance monologue, such as you might get with Richard Pryor, or Lenny Bruce, or George Carlin. So I don't feel vulnerable because I know the line of demarcation between "Writer Kevin" and "Narrative Kevin."

If you're trying to convey a crucial emotional truth, you have to be in total control of the emotional pacing of the story, and if you can only strike one note in terms of tone then you're going to be quite limited as a writer.

In some sense that was a blessing, because it forced me to focus on prose. I feel my narrative voice in prose is more authentically me because I developed it without ever soliciting the advice of anyone else.

Energy seems to be the more critical of those two variables, because if I'm really feeling the push/pull to write, then I'll make the time.

I read a lot; I tried to understand the mechanisms that made the books I liked successful, and I went that route. So, as for readers - when I think about them I like to think they read the same books I do.

That being said, if you slept with me and are filled with shame at the possibility of the world knowing, then you should have considered that before you hopped into bed with a writer.