A Quote by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
What I also love about Lorrie Moore stories is they take me a long time to read. They're not easy for me because each sentence, I feel like, is so rich and dense, it just sends me off in a thousand directions.
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It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It's never occurred to me before; I've never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.
In my office I have a sign that says, 'Don't think. Just write!' and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, or even each sentence or paragraph. For me, stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times.
I read Carver. Julio Cortazar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.
Long before I started to write in earnest, Lorrie Moore taught me you could have a woman narrator who was funny and complex and even wrongheaded. She opened up a lot of space that me and a million other women rushed into.
All modesty aside, I think I'm good at reading scripts. The way I read a script is as fast as I can, all in one sitting, and I don't read many of the stage directions. I only read enough stage directions to let me know where I am, because they're always so verbose and mostly horseshit. So I only read the dialogue, which allows me to see the movie in my mind's eye in real time.
If I'm exhausted and I just don't feel like it, then I don't do it. I am a human being, after all. But I also know I'm the kind of person who, if I take one day off, well, it's very easy for me to take the next day off and then quit exercising.
I love fiction. I like reading short stories. Cupcakes, pop songs, Polaroids, and short stories. They all raise and answer questions in a short space. I like Lorrie Moore. Amy Hempel. Tim O'Brien. Raymond Carver. All the heartbreakers.
I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.
Action films don't speak to me, because that's not my skill set. I also have a lot of stipulations about stories I don't want to perpetuate, ones that bring me down or make me feel like life's not worth living.
I don't care why they love me, as long as they love me. I think people respect me because they feel like - I'm kind of like Christmas. I come back every year. You can't get rid of me. I just keep coming back.
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows. If I fail, if I succeed...At least I live as I believe. No matter what they take from me, They can't take away my dignity. Because the greatest love of all is happening to me. I found the greatest love of all inside of me. The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to LOVE YOURSELf...It is the GREATEST love of all
I read all of the stories that people write about me. The ones that are really interesting are the ones where they actually write their take on me as opposed to just printing what I said, because they're asking similar questions so often, sometimes it just sounds like I'm answering the questions different intentionally.
My dad has pretty much taught me, he's built this thing with me, he trains with me, practices with me, goes to the gym with me, we battle each other at the go-kart track. We're so competitive with each other, and I feel like we both make each other better because we're so hard on each other, just trying to be the best we can.
If I've learned anything, it's there's just no drama, which is awesome. I've also just learned to read when it's a good time to talk about something serious and when it's not. And whenever I start to have a conversation with them, and I kind of see their eyes start to glaze over, I'm like, 'Okay, another time is better.' You learn how to compromise and you learn how to read each other. Honestly, being in a band with two guys has prepared me so much for when it's time for me to get married!
I've heard stories of other people that are similar stories to me - their mother or father passing away. People have come out to me on Instagram. It's amazing that they can tell me and confide in me. I always want to take the time and write these long messages telling them how much that means to me.
What I love about the Bible is that it's a group of stories but it's all telling one main story. It's about Jesus Christ. The story is not about me. That takes a lot of the pressure off me, but it also puts the responsibility on me to point people to who the true story is about.
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