I didn't write poems for a number of years after graduate school because the criticisms of other students in the workshops wouldn't quiet down in my mind when I tried to work.

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.

You know, there are those writers who work at writing every day. I'm not one of those guys. I tend to work at varying levels of intensity, based on the amount of time and energy I have available.

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.

I tend to work most often from the method of ignoring any ritualistic writing for long periods of time, and then I'll spend three straight weeks writing for 12 hours a day and just going through the motions with my worldly business because the compulsion to write descends upon me like a kind of madness. I don't mean to be dramatic, but it feels that way when it strikes.

At the time I was first writing the stories/essays that appear in Oedipus Wrecked, I was still under the impression that people would be delighted to see their name in print. I overlooked the fact that I was writing about intimate matters, and people are a bit touchy about airing their private lives in such a public fashion. Especially when it's done without their consent.

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.