It's just the garbage in/garbage out trick. If you're not taking any fiction in, good or bad, then how can you be spitting any back out (good or bad)? I can't even imagine trying to write without reading. Really, I can hardly write a novel at all if I'm not reading just book after book.

This is what noir is, what it can be when it stops playing nice--blunt force drama stripped down to the bone, then made to dance across the page.

Life's so much easier when you're not always maintaining two worlds: the one formed of lies, which feels real, and the one you live in, which often feels like lies. So easy to get them confused.

Art isn't and shouldn't be responsible. If it is, it isn't functioning as art.

This is form and content and diction and tone and imagination all looking up at the exact same moment: When Molly Tanzer claps once at the front of the classroom.

Craft can get you through ninety percent of a piece, but it's art that carries you at the end.

It's important to look ahead, I think, to shape your stuff for - again - effect. Because it's just so easy to write long, flowy sentences, get lost in them. The hard part's making them matter, making yourself make them matter.