Because of an instability at my own core, it comforts me to live, fixed, within a story. If reading is our consolation for having been allotted only one life, I find that writing oneself into a fictional world is even more comforting.

I don't know about ground rules; but I create the world that arrives with the characters or situation or voice in my head that instigates the piece, whatever form it may take.

I used to teach writing in a federal prison, and for my students' benefit, I would liken the narrative use of this highly personal point of view to a boxer's getting in close to his opponent.

I do believe we are actors in our own dramas, which, moment by moment, we ourselves write; that we are characters in our own fictions or those devised for us by someone or something else.

I do seem to favor a deathbed confession as the occasion for my dramatic monologues.

As a practical matter, I like the dramatic monologue for its compelling intimacy. To be inside one's character, to register his or her every vagrant thought, emotion, and response - the first-person viewpoint grants this privilege and immediacy.

Theatre aside, my penchant for the extended monologue began with my reading of Browning's dramatic monologues, in high school. My inclination to adopt the form for prose was confirmed by Richard Howard's book of dramatic monologues, Untitled Subjects.