It had occurred to him that if the undead don't realize that they are dead, he might easily be one of them himself. 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
