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 still think about the writers I loved when I was a kid. Dan Chaon stills kids thinking In some ways all of my fiction is like a conversation I'm having with the writers I read when I was first falling in love with books. Dan Chaon falling-in-love book fiction I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out. Dan Chaon college teacher sex My main reader was my wife Sheila, and I haven't written a lot since she died. Dan Chaon sheila wife reader I always worry that knowing too much about a novel or a story early on in writing will close it down - it feels fatalistic in some way. Dan Chaon knowing worry writing When I was younger I was attracted to people who had that kind of artifice - people who were incredibly polished and had a complex persona that always seemed to be turned on. I was really interested in these kinds of people because I felt so unformed. Dan Chaon persona kind people The danger in writing about a world you don't know very well is that you can get lost in it, and sometimes I'll end up with a hundred pages I don't know what to do with. Dan Chaon pages writing world I start with an image, then I go from the image toward exploring the situation. Then I write a scene, and from the scene I find the character, from the character I find the larger plot. It's like deductive reasoning - I start with the smaller stuff and work backward. Dan Chaon plot writing character For me, the process of writing a novel happens mostly in your head before you actually start writing. Dan Chaon novel process writing I know a lot of people don't listen to music when they're writing because it distracts them, but for me it's almost a way to get into the self-hypnotic state that I need to be in to write. Dan Chaon self writing people Maybe it's because I grew up during the MTV generation, but to me a perfect song is one I can imagine a music video to, a song that can take you into a dream. Dan Chaon mtv dream song I keep a daily journal of whatever weird thought comes into my mind, like when I had a dream I was in North Dakota in the middle of a blizzard and for some reason the Egyptian pyramids were there, too - that I was able to shuffle into the book. Dan Chaon egyptian-pyramids dream book One of the things I rarely do is write about sex. Dan Chaon writing sex
