Do you have a writing routine?
Not really. To live as a writer, you have to wear so many different hats. I tend to work in spurts -- fiction I do in the interstices between non-fiction projects. The book I just finished two weeks ago [about the sex change], I got the idea last August and did it in under a year. It’s a long time in between ideas, but once I find the right thing it goes really, really fast.
You said you consider yourself more of a non-fiction writer. How does the process differ between fiction and non-fiction writing?
Non-fiction pays the bills more reliably. And you get to be voyeuristic. The exciting part is not so much the writing but the research. There’s always that moment where you come across something so humbling -- things you find out about people that are so strange that you never could’ve made it up. I get so excited. And I use that passion to fuel the writing. I just have to tell the world. It’s pointing at something that’s amazing and just trying to make people excited about that thing.
And what about the fiction?
I feel more exposed doing fiction. With non-fiction, you can hide behind the story. I did this book for fun. You have to create that sacred space where you’re just doing it for the fun of it. It’s playtime, the sheer delight of making something. I know something’s a great work of art when I think “that’s so cool, I want to make one like that.” That’s what I want to make people feel: “I want to go out and start a novel.”
And if you weren’t a writer, what would you want to be?
As I get older and older I find myself less interesting. I love the piece of journalism that you get to go be a fly on the wall. Maybe a real estate agent -- you get to snoop through people’s houses. Or a scientist. I’d love to get the chance to find out about people or about the way the world works. Anything where you get to constantly be thrown into situations where you get to learn a lot, where you get to suck down strange information all around you.
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