For the last few years I've tried to force myself to write at least one page every day, which doesn't sound like… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I also have just my own limits about stuff. I'm not interested in writing graphically about sexual assault for example. I feel… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
There's a lot of effort expended once you begin to completely trash your life. Sometimes, writing feels like this to me. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I always worry that knowing too much about a novel or a story early on in writing will close it down -… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
Writing about women's sexuality is very scary for me because I'm always afraid I'll get it wrong. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I love to write when I feel like everybody else is asleep and when I feel like the world is kind of… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I guess I've been blessed with insomnia because I do a lot of my writing at night. Because I don't sleep as… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I think that the way that I write stories is by instinct. You have some basic ideas - a character, or an… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
The earliest impetuses for writing, for me, were simply the strange things I happened to notice in my everyday life, stuff I… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I'm working with fragments a lot of the time and the connective tissue isn't there yet. I think of it the way… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
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… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
A lot of people work really diligently to maintain a "profile" in the writing world, but that's so hard, and so boring… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I tend to like order in almost every other aspect of my life, but for me, the process of writing is really… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
Writing short stories was kind of like I was cheating the whole time, in some way. I went back and forth between… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“It’s very hard — weirdly hard — to clear your mind of all that crap so that you can just sit down… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
You can recognize in your own reading habits what writers are doing that works and what doesn't. I'm becoming much more aware… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
That's how I work, whether with stories or novels - they start with an image that comes to me in a daydream,… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
The danger in writing about a world you don't know very well is that you can get lost in it, and sometimes… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I start with an image, then I go from the image toward exploring the situation. Then I write a scene, and from… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“That night I sat up writing in my diary writing to Big Me: 'I hope you are alive ' I wrote. 'I… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
For me, the process of writing a novel happens mostly in your head before you actually start writing. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
For the last few years I've tried to force myself to write at least one page every day, which doesn't sound like much but… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“It's hard to believe that this is how it's done. That this is how we get here into the world, by accident or design,… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I also have just my own limits about stuff. I'm not interested in writing graphically about sexual assault for example. I feel like the… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“I have to admit that most of the time I read in the same way that I smoke and chew gum and jiggle my… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“Outside, the sleet had gotten thicker. You could hear it pebbling against the large glass windows, you could see it swirling wildly through the… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work. — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“I've been talking to myself a lot lately. I don't know what that's about, but my mother was the same way. She hated to… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“Your Mom's Car. Think about that. Try to wrap your brain around the supernatural and spiritual implications that the name bears down you. Your… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
“He pictures amputated human arms flopping like fish down the center of the road; syringes floating on beds of liposuctioned fat; gelatinous human eyeballs… — Dan Chaon Copy Share Image
