Each person has their own calling on this Earth.
"Openness" [story] ultimately asks this same question - can a relationship survive complete honesty? As a romantic, I want to say "Yes, of course!" But, over time, I've come to agree with Dan Savage.
Wit and humor seem to always factor into this - there's a tongue-in-cheek tone you get when you take on a formalist story - because there's an inherent voice you're trying to copy (and often to satirize).
I really admire the experimentalists who challenge traditional narrative - writers like Ishmael Reed, Michael Martone, Donald Barthelme, Tatyana Tolstaya, George Saunders, and many others.
I love the Russian absurdists - [Nikolai] Gogol,[Daniil] Kharms, and [Vladimir] Bulgakov. Even within the Russian experimentalists, there's a lineage of traditional narrative, conflict, and character development, which I find vital to my storytelling.
While my stories are experimental, they're also very traditional. I love the works of the great Russian writers like [Pavel] Chekhov and [Lev] Tolstoy, and their ability to portray our human struggles and joys.
I set many of my stories in a gritty "realist" world, but one that is plagued by an overuse of technology, which is akin to the world we find ourselves living in now.
I see pictures in my mind and become the character in the song as I'm writing. It's kind of method songwriting, where you're the actor in the song.
How would we feel if you could pay extra to smoke on airplanes? When we decide something is a bad idea in general for society, we don't want the rich to be able to buy their way out of it.
We need to take down our "Do not disturb" signs. . . snap out of our stupor and come out of our coma and awake from our apathy.
it is good to be sitting some place in public at 2:30 in the afternoon without getting the flesh ripped from your bones.