I would happily donate one of my novels if someon wants to organise a reading group and then discuss it with me.

Very interesting notion. Maybe the question should be reframed: why do we invent myths and fictions? It maybe that they aren't useful in the sense a tool is useful, but that only fiction can create the kind of connective tissue between people that they need (of course all art does this), and that th...

My favorite mode is first person, past tense. I like to figure out how the narrator is lying to me, because they usually are in some aspect or another. Yes? Second person narration is new to me. I will have to check this out, preferably on something a bit grander than a greeting card. Yes - it's ca...

I actually use all modes when writing in order to deepen the text, and then decide about halfway though which mode it should be in, often changing my mind two or three times. First two novels are in first person / present tense; new novel third person / past tense.

I am a published (award-winning) novelist and I teach creative writing. I have also what's called 'book-doctored' a number of novels. So what can be taught / learned; what can't be? Firstly, ways of approaching what you might want to write: basic stuff: should it be first person / third person / or ...

James Salter. Same generation as Bellow and Roth and Malamud et al. Probably the greatest writer of the short elegant sentence. Few writers' style has had such an effect on me. When I read Light Years, which I do often, I have to take a breath between paragraphs. The second paragraph of the second c...