Open Loop Press » fiction

On Listening: Salvatore Scibona Tunes in to Detail

editor — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:44:08 +0000

"I think for a writer you don’t see a thing until you use the word for it and the more precise the word you can use the more precisely you see it. On the other hand, the word is an instrument in order to lead you to the thing and you can spin a whole lot of words around yourself for years and years and years, as the jeweler does, until it gets to the point where your primary relationship is with the language and not with the thing."

The Literary Horologist: Paul Harding “Tinkers” With Time

editor — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:09:52 +0000

"… I don't write the book in any order, I just literally wake up and wonder about whatever immediately strikes me as interesting. Usually I have a question about something: 'What does she think at that point?' Or, 'What does he do?' Or, 'What does the cemetery look like in the autumn?' And I just start writing."

The Alchemy of Composition: Jamie O’Neill’s Literary Magic

editor — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:04:50 +0000

"When you're writing you're that bird on the wing, you're soaring and you're plummeting but you're not telling the wings to do anything. When you're describing afterwards what's happened you're applying logic to something that really is intuitive. You're talking about ailerons and that sort of thing, like you're moving an airplane rather than the eagle."

A Study in Character: Dedra Johnson on the “Real” Voice in Fiction

editor — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 06:32:25 +0000

"I've always liked the idea of the unreliable narrator, or the multi-layered narrator, where you understand more than the narrator is telling you, and so I very intentionally did that with her. Sandrine being a child made it possible to do that."

Fiction as Fibbing: Benjamin Taylor

editor — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:02:01 +0000

"It's about fifty percent based on certain things I know from real life, and about fifty percent made up out of nothing, just out of daydreaming. I think that's the way it should be. This is not memoir, this is not autobiography, this is not confession. It's fibbing. It's making things up."

Exploring Transition: Aryn Kyle

editor — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:53:38 +0000

"I think a lot of my writing begins with something I lived or something I saw, but then develops from the question, 'What would it have been like to live through that experience if I was this person, or that person, or if this had happened rather than that?'"