Originally asked
Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017
Vox's fixed 9 Questions format asks this verbatim across respondents.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Robert Birnbaum, Interview, Identity Theory, 16 February 2002 source ↗
But I will be horrified by the way I say kind of and like, and I keep qualifying everything. That’s very feminine. I would like to say it plain, but it always comes out with all these silly qualifiers.
But it seems to me that I’m somebody who is deeply skeptical and trying to combat this skepticism. So my writing is probably situated somewhere between the poles of skepticism and ecstasy, with my dream being to have more ecstatic poems.
Overthinking. I tend to conflate the amount of time spent on something with how good it is. Sometimes intuition is better than proof, and gut instinct better than hours of “work.”
I also developed an unhelpful aversion to asking for favors. Frankly, if I had sought help from others, I would have made far fewer mistakes.
Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.
I just lack the basic fact-finding instinct.
People just were the mysterious sum of their actions.
Touchstone books….I don’t know. So Long, See You Tomorrow; The Moviegoer; A Fan’s Notes; Alice Munro’s stories.
These mandarin-precious-princess-and-the-pea notions about a writer’s “special place” just didn’t match my life.
I’m actually suspicious of people who have a lot of friends.
Adam Zagajewski, Alain de Botton, Ursula K. Le Guin, Adam Gopnik, Courtney Maum, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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