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" For three years, I lived in a miniscule apartment on Beacon Street, less than a mile from the Boston Marathon explosions. "
Laura van den Berg
Street
Boston
Lived
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" In the novels I most admire, there is this sense that, within the confines of the world, the possibilities are always opening in new and surprising ways - that was a quality I strived to capture, with the hope that the reader would be willing to follow me. "
Laura van den Berg
World
Possibilities
Quality
" As a genre, the best horror poses central human questions - Who can you trust? What is the cost of our secrets? What is our relationship to history? What are we blind to? What evils are lurking under the smooth surface of the self? - through radical dislocations. "
Laura van den Berg
Relationship
History
Best
" As for me, I was a lonely kid, with few close friends until I was an adult - even when I might have been perceived as being on the inside, I felt like I was on the outside, kind of like viewing the world through a sheet of glass. "
Laura van den Berg
Kid
World
Me
" I think where a writer falls on the realism/non-realism continuum has a lot to do with their sight, as in, 'This is how I see the world.' And it seems my sight is off-kilter and kind of strange, but I come by that naturally; I'm not consciously pushing toward a particular point on the continuum. "
Laura van den Berg
Think
Sight
See
" We write in a culture that favors the heft of the novel. Better still if the novel in question is large enough to be wielded interchangeably as a doorstop and a weapon. "
Laura van den Berg
Question
Better
Culture
" On my first trip to Havana, I was stopped by a woman who turned out to be a Canadian tour guide and who had mistaken me for a woman who had been part of one of her tour groups. "
Laura van den Berg
Woman
First
Havana
" It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it. "
Laura van den Berg
Say
Want
Open
" A sense of play is important when I'm writing, and so messing around with, say, a magic routine can feel like play, at least initially. "
Laura van den Berg
Play
Magic
Important
" In the world of the American creative writing workshop, I've encountered teachers who are tempted to place, or have actually placed, a moratorium on child narrators. Students love to write them, but children come laden with complications. "
Laura van den Berg
World
Child
Children
" If we can think of a place, the physicality of a place, as a kind of 'material,' I would say the landscape of Florida in particular was especially important while writing 'Isle.' "
Laura van den Berg
Landscape
Place
Writing
" Sometimes we talk about memory as though it's firm and fixed, but of course, memory is highly fluid and subjective and thus highly subject to manipulation. "
Laura van den Berg
Talk
Memory
Manipulation
" I always tell my students that, in fiction, the opening is a clue to the work's DNA: not only what it is, but what it will become, where it will lead you. "
Laura van den Berg
Always
You
Work
" My students are often asking me, 'What do you think are the most important qualities for a writer?' And one thing I always tells them is that it's helpful to be willing to sit in a space of uncertainty. There are entire years, especially with novels, where you really don't know where the project is going. "
Laura van den Berg
You
Uncertainty
Think
" In fiction, we are not bound by social convention, so the things that mystify and unsettle are allowed to rise to the surface. "
Laura van den Berg
Rise
Fiction
Social
" I love Javier Marias; I love his novel 'Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me.' "
Laura van den Berg
Me
Battle
Think
" I lived in Florida until I was 22. "
Laura van den Berg
Florida
Lived
Until
" As a reader, I appreciate a world that feels unsettled and also visceral, inhabitable, so that's a quality I try and bring to my own work. In this way, dislocation and precision make total sense to me as a unit. "
Laura van den Berg
Work
Quality
Me
" I'm such a first-person writer. "
Laura van den Berg
First-Person
Writer
" When I'm between projects, I keep a journal I call a 'thought log,' and it's my practice to write down whatever interests me. "
Laura van den Berg
Journal
Practice
Me
" If I'm really rolling with a short story, I work on it everywhere and end up with a finished draft in a couple months, but a novel really demands that I step out of my life and vanish into the world of the book. "
Laura van den Berg
Life
World
Work
" If you're working on a novel, whatever you do, don't say, 'I am almost finished with my novel.' It's worse than chanting Bloody Mary three times in front of a mirror. "
Laura van den Berg
You
I Am
Mirror
" 'Find Me' I think, is brooding in a very literal sense of the word in that you have all of these sort of interior storm that's growing within Joy over the course of the book and leading her to her moment. And certainly, I think there's an aspect of the supernatural. "
Laura van den Berg
Storm
Book
Joy
" I love creating mysteries, but I am terrible at solving them. "
Laura van den Berg
I Am
Creating
Am
" Often, contrasts bring art to life: the bright speck of paint on a dark canvas; the tightrope walk between humor and tragedy. "
Laura van den Berg
Humor
Tragedy
Art
" Florida is a most unusual place. It can feel at once stifling and like anything is possible there. "
Laura van den Berg
Anything Is Possible
Place
Like
" I love noir, quite obviously. "
Laura van den Berg
Love
Obviously
Noir
" Children tell themselves stories, engage in self-delusion and fantasy, but those narratives are more evolving than calcified - and with that malleability comes both freedom and danger. "
Laura van den Berg
Children
Tell
Fantasy
" A collection is, by my lights, a chance to build a universe, an overarching ecosystem. But it's common enough to encounter a hodgepodge instead, where flashes of brilliance are undercut by clunkers. "
Laura van den Berg
Enough
Build
Lights
" Ever since I started writing in college, I have, save for a few short breaks here and there, been working away on something. I love it, I need it, and so it never occurred to me to put writing on the back burner. "
Laura van den Berg
Love
Me
Need
" I am temperamentally drawn to work that shoves the strange and normal against one another, it's true, although I don't see the 'strange' and the 'normal' as being two separate categories of experience; for me, they are intertwined, hard to separate. "
Laura van den Berg
True
Experience
I Am