Identity issues are hardwired into the way I think about character - it's almost as if I can't get away from them even if I want to. Dan Chaon More Quotes by Dan Chaon More Quotes From Dan Chaon I'd read an enormous amount but had spent so much time in my own head that I didn't have extensive social skills. Suddenly I was in this world where I was surrounded by these incredibly polished and wealthy kids who had gone to prep schools, and I felt daunted by them. I don't think people were aware of how full of anxiety I was... For a long time I felt like I was living in a place where I shouldn't have been. Dan Chaon kids school thinking Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work. Dan Chaon plot block thinking You can recognize in your own reading habits what writers are doing that works and what doesn't. I'm becoming much more aware of that after reading a decade of student stories. Dan Chaon becoming reading stories A lot of time, with stories, I'll start out with a title and try to dream myself into the story that it evokes - a kind of subconscious exercise in which I'm trawling for some kind of entryway into fiction. Dan Chaon dream exercise trying Plot was always secondary in my mind. Dan Chaon plot mind I like to sleep about four or five really solid hours at night, and then sometimes take a nap in the afternoon or early evening after dinner. I love naps. Dan Chaon naps sleep night The feeling of being an outsider, and the identity theme, are hardwired into me. If there's anything really autobiographical in my fiction, it's that feeling. I always feel that way. Dan Chaon identity feelings fiction A lot of people work really diligently to maintain a "profile" in the writing world, but that's so hard, and so boring most of the time. So you just keep doing what you like to do, I guess, and try to enjoy it. Dan Chaon writing trying people You can't count on notoriety lasting very long, and there's no way to predict whether anyone will care about your books or you in three years, let alone ten or twenty. Dan Chaon long book years I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage. Dan Chaon ghost-stories horror-stories writing I read a lot, but at the same time I'm not a particularly good or diligent or discriminating reader. I go through maybe close to a thousand or more books a year, but a lot of times I'll only read bits and pieces of any one individual text. Dan Chaon pieces book years A lot of times in my short fiction there isn't much dramatized scene - there are a lot of short, interconnected bits, snippets of conversation, continual action, and so on. I frequently rely pretty heavily on voice. Dan Chaon voice action fiction I think that the way that I write stories is by instinct. You have some basic ideas - a character, or an image, or a situation that sounds compelling - and then you just feel your way around until you find the edges of your story. It's like going into a dark room... you stumble around until you find the walls and then inch your way to the light switch. Dan Chaon wall writing character The earliest impetuses for writing, for me, were simply the strange things I happened to notice in my everyday life, stuff I read about in the grocery store tabloids my mom bought, situations that struck me as compelling, anecdotes I'd heard, images, words, metaphors. Dan Chaon everyday mom writing There's a lot of effort expended once you begin to completely trash your life. Sometimes, writing feels like this to me. Dan Chaon effort writing sometimes I never could figure out how those people like Bukowski could be both carousers and writers at the same time, because to me writing takes as much destructive energy as it takes to be a really good professional drunk. Dan Chaon drunk writing people I tend to like order in almost every other aspect of my life, but for me, the process of writing is really chaotic and decadent and indulgent. Dan Chaon process writing order That's how I work, whether with stories or novels - they start with an image that comes to me in a daydream, and a lot of times I'm walking around with these pictures in my head for awhile before I start writing. Dan Chaon daydreaming stories writing I knew I wanted to play around with genre-esque imagery, and the identity theft stuff came in the middle, when I was figuring out how the characters were connected to those images. Dan Chaon identity play character I started out as a poet who primarily wanted to write about image and moment. Over the years I've been trying to teach myself how to do plot and scene. My first story collection had the most issues with the plotlessness, and when I was writing my second collection I was teaching myself how to make things happen. Dan Chaon teaching writing years
