Even while I was working on the novel I would also write short stories as relief, just to be in a wieldier world that could negotiated more easily and more quickly. In the novel, I even changed the narrator from a man to a woman.

Sometimes you just feel like you could work forever on something and never know when it's done.

Even in so-called realist or conventional writing there can be defamiliarization.

Giving the reader the space to move around and be active, and encourage their active response is important to me. That will connect the reader more to the text.

I have what I came to find in my research is a mild form of synesthesia, though I never would have labeled it as such. It's how I think about numbers and letters. They all have inherent genders.

I started reading contemporary fiction in college or right after college. It wasn't as if I was steeped in experimental minimalism when I was twelve or something. I was reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

In my writing classes, I don't outlaw any genre writing.