I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
In a movie, you need good actors, whereas in a book, you don’t, unless you have a really bad imagination. In a book, your imagination will do the acting for you. Also, the process of revelation is often different. Tension is achieved in a different way.
Stories–individual stories, family stories, national stories–are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.
The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits.
Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it’s a sad view.
Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it’s true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
