As I Get Older I Find Myself

On The Last Drafts, I Focus On The Words Themselves, Including The Rub Of Vowels And Consonants, Stressed And Unstressed Syllables. Yet Even At This Stage I'm Often Surprised. A Different Ending Or A New Character Shows Up And I'm Back To Where I Began, Letting The Story Happen, Just Trying To Stay Out Of The Way.

As I Get Older I Find Myself Thinking It All Begins With Shakespeare.

I Usually Do At Least A Dozen Drafts And Progressively Make More-conscious Decisions. Because I've Always Believed Stories Are Closer To Poems Than Novels, I Spend A Lot Of Time On The Story's Larger Rhythms, Such As Sentence And Paragraph Length, Placement Of Flashbacks And Dialogue.

I Love Learning About Different Dialects And I Own All Sorts Of Regional And Time-period Slang Dictionaries. I Often Browse Through Relevant Ones While Writing A Story. I Also Read A Lot Of Diaries And Oral Histories.

It Struck Her How Eating Was A Comfort During A Hard Time Because It Reminded You That There Had Been Other Days, Good Days, When You’d Eaten The Same Thing. Reminded You There Were Good Days In Life, When Precious Little Else Did. (268)