When I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel.

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.

I would recommend, definitely, developing a 'day job' that you like - don't expect to make money writing!

My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.

The style developed over decades, really, but I started out writing pretty traditional stories, then became impatient. It was a writer named Russell Edson who showed me that one could write in any way at all.

If I was writing about an academic or a more difficult person, I would use the Latinate vocabulary more, but I do think Anglo-saxon is the language of emotion.

Part of my mind is working on how to end the thing while I'm going on. You need at least two brains to write.