You describe yourself as headstrong. Has this helped or hurt your writing?

I think that being headstrong has sometimes hurt me in my everyday life, and dating (happily married now, though, thanks) and in making money, but actually helped my writing.

There's a lot of mystery around how people become successful writers (even what it means to be a successful writer), but it seems to boil down to two camps. There are a few lucky souls who have basically won a lottery. Maybe they received a major award or hit the market with the right materials at the right time. This is one way to make it. The second way is to grind away like a glacier, slowly scouring the earth and moving ever toward the horizon. In this sense, writing literary fiction is not very different from other ancient arts like acting or painting. While it is my sincere hope to one day wind up in camp A, for right now (and for the last ten years) I'm part of group B. Most of us are in group B, actually, and I think what keeps us going is the secret (or in my case, not so secret) belief that we will succeed despite the odds. Oh sure, there are writers who sound very humble, but you have to have some kind of ego to get through all the rejections.

Ironically, the fact that headstrong stubbornness kept me from landing a lucrative job right out of college (I steadfastly and foolishly refused to do an internship and then refused to seek advice on how to improve and market my resume) created a space for writing in my life. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I’d begun to dabble in more-serious writing. My stories still smacked of genre fiction (two stories I sent off when I applied to my MFA program included a tale of a sorceress storming the gates of heaven and a crime drama), but I felt like my writing was becoming more sophisticated. At the time, I was also desperate for a new direction in my life. I'd grown sick of Los Angeles, being (mostly) single and a series of low-paying, boring jobs (coffee-house employee, shop clerk, McDonald's drive-through, and then office clerk at my dad's plumbing company). I signed up for an MFA program. Strangely, if it hadn’t been for career failure in my early twenties, I would not have gone into an MFA program and would probably not be writing literary fiction today.

Also, by the time I got to grad school, real-world failure had made a serious dent in my ego, and I was suddenly more willing to learn and to listen to counselors, writers, professors, and even my parents.

There is some debate in the writing community about the value of an MFA. It sounds like it worked for you.

With the exception of some hefty student loans, I regard it as a mostly positive experience. I feel like I got a handle on what makes for good writing. Also, since I was not an English major as an undergrad, I was exposed to a lot of writing and authors who were new to me.

Were there any teachers or courses that particularly stood out?

My small epiphany came in a revision course taught by Pamela Painter. Before that course, I'd always been afraid of revision work. I felt as though my first draft was a house of cards and any slight change would collapse the whole story. By rigorously revising a short story in that class (I rewrote it entirely three times), I discovered that I had the ability to make things better via revision. This was huge! Not only that, but I suddenly had a better sense of what to look for when editing. (Although in the class Painter suggested that we use the term revision instead of editing.) That story eventually went on to be my first short published in a literary journal.

What do you think makes a short story great?

I think literary short stories are driven by a discrete number of elements: voice of the narrator, what's at stake, the consistent internal lives of characters, novelty and lack of cliche, and a rich sense of the world around us. The more you have of one element, the less you need of others. If your narrative voice is strong and rich enough, you can write a great story with very little action or plot. On the other hand, readers might be willing to forgive the lack of narrative voice if the story and stakes are very well crafted.

Where has your writing taken you?

I've finished a number of short stories and had some of them published in journals like Glimmer Train, The Missouri Review, The Journal, Western Humanities Review, and others. Last year, I completed a linked short-story collection called Bringing Ararat and have spent the better part of a year looking for a publisher. I had a couple of close calls including a finalist (second place) finish in the Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction and some nice rejection letters, but the collection is still looking for a publishing home.

What are you working on now?

A novel that I hope to have completed by late 2009 or early 2010. Of the two, late 2009 would be my choice.

Mr. Inezian says he has suffered from writer's envy in the past, and knows that it is a common issue. In the spirit of that knowledge, he says he has no plans of leaving his day job anytime soon, and that in a typical week he works anywhere from 50 to 70 hours at two different jobs, neither of which involve much creative writing. At least once a month he considers going back to school to learn computer coding, and he regards himself not as someone with a successful writing career but as someone who writes despite everything else. Indeed, that's how he knows that he is a writer.

Armand's site: www.Inezian.com. And the MFA Blog to which he contributes: www.afterthemfa.com.