If they have a history in my fictional consciousness, I think they emerge on the page as more complex characters, because I feel more confident of where they’ve come from. But by the same token, they’re confounding…Characters can be a little like family members, you know. There’s always someone you like a lot, or even love deeply, but you can’t help wishing they’d just settle down and do what they should be doing in life.—Antonia Nelson, interviewed by Susan McInnis

A character has to want something to be worth writing about. I think the relationship between what they want and what they get is pretty complicated. Kundera talks about this—the complicated nature of action. You’re trying for something and you reach for it, and in the course of reaching for it, you get something entirely different.—Kevin Canty

How far did I take it? I went to Kentucky. I flew my family to Montana. I started in Kentucky and made this drive, took notes all the way, stayed in the hotels I thought Virgil would stay in. During the course of writing, I acquired a variety of false identification including three birth certificates, a passport to British Honduras, a pilot’s license, a military European driver’s license, a private-investigator’s license, various library cards wherever I could, as many as I could, in order to sort of become him.—Chris Offutt, interviewed by Rob Trucks

The lesson I took from this experience my friend had was to protect your writer-self, first and foremost. If you’re feeling at all vulnerable about the work (and, frankly, who doesn’t at the early stages?), don’t send it to anyone.—Melanie Bishop

I don’t think there’s any correlation between quality and numbers. There may be a correlation between the quality of a book and its staying power, its ability to continue to be read, for no reason other than it continues to speak to people’s lives in an ongoing way.—Russell Banks, interviewed by Rob Trucks

Issue #13 WA13$6.00