I used to live in New York, and I know a number of people who have friends who work at galleries. I spent time hanging out with them, going to openings. It was a good way to do research, to hang out and to look at the art that was present.
Crime novels have a clear beginning, middle, and end: a mystery, its investigation, and its resolution. The reader expects events to play out logically and efficiently, and these expectations force the writer to spend a good deal of time working on macrostructure rather than prettifying individual sentences.
I ought to be more hardboiled; I'd like to be. I don't think I have it in me. To write in clipped sentences. To employ gritty metaphor in the introduction of sultry blondes... I can't do it, so why bother trying?
I prefer to write about ordinary people who find themselves in a singularly bizarre situation - that is to say, the one moment in their lives when they are forced to confront danger or mystery.
I remember my father banging away on an IBM Selectric in the garage. He wrote his first novels on that machine. I remember its pebbly surface, its cold heft. It made its mark, literally and violently.
I think everyone assumes that I talk to my parents a lot about writing, but I didn't - they're my parents. We didn't have constant workshops running in my household.
It's always been a struggle to differentiate myself, but I like my parents. I enjoy doing events with them, and I don't feel I should purposely avoid something just for the sake of being different.
It's impossible for me to disentangle how much of my storytelling urge is the product of growing up with novelist parents and how much is a genetic legacy from those same parents.
Naturally, it was easier for me to envision becoming a novelist than it is for most people. I had two great in-house teachers; I had parents who considered a career in the arts a real possibility rather than a dreamy arrow shot into the sky.
People are interested in writing, and often there's an unjustifiable sense of people to believe my talking to them for the book is going to accord them any sort of fame. Which it won't. At the same time, they can be more circumspect if they know they're on the record.
Science, literature, and common sense tell us that the self is a fickle thing, subject to revision in real time, and that the chasm that exists between any two people exists inside each and every one of us.
The final product in a play is not just the written word. It's the production, the performance. The script is, of course, a very important piece; but it's only one element. Ultimately, yours is one of several voices. People can change your work in a play for better or worse.
The most important lesson my parents taught me is that writing is a job, one that requires discipline and commitment. Most of the time it's a fun job, a wonderful job, but sometimes it isn't, and those are the days that test you.
