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I guess I'm curious about how people process grief and how they process loss. And I'm also interested in the ways in which an event can have long-reaching consequences and a life over the course of years.
Dan Chaon
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Dan Chaon
Age: 60
Novelist
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Nebraska
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More quotes by Dan Chaon
I start with an image, then I go from the image toward exploring the situation. Then I write a scene, and from the scene I find the character, from the character I find the larger plot. It's like deductive reasoning - I start with the smaller stuff and work backward.
Dan Chaon
In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.
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I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.
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Identity issues are hardwired into the way I think about character - it's almost as if I can't get away from them even if I want to.
Dan Chaon
One of the things I rarely do is write about sex.
Dan Chaon
The feeling of being an outsider, and the identity theme, are hardwired into me. If there's anything really autobiographical in my fiction, it's that feeling. I always feel that way.
Dan Chaon
Writing short stories was kind of like I was cheating the whole time, in some way. I went back and forth between writing the novels and sort of sneaking out to work on stories occasionally. These stories were written over the last 10 years or so, as I was taking breaks from the novels I've written.
Dan Chaon
I never could figure out how those people like Bukowski could be both carousers and writers at the same time, because to me writing takes as much destructive energy as it takes to be a really good professional drunk.
Dan Chaon
The thing that made me turn more towards writing was realizing how hard it was going to be to get a singular vision on film and how much more control I would have if I were writing novels.
Dan Chaon
It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now remembered it.
Dan Chaon
It's not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn't. Because it occurred to me that maybe it had ruined my life, in a kind of quiet way--a little lie, probably not so vital, insidiously separating me from everyone I loved.
Dan Chaon
Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story.
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You can recognize in your own reading habits what writers are doing that works and what doesn't. I'm becoming much more aware of that after reading a decade of student stories.
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I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage.
Dan Chaon
There are all kinds of strange threads in American culture, and places where sympathy is extended and places where it isn't, and places where outrage is extended and places where it's not. It's this constantly shifting barrel of eels.
Dan Chaon
Fiction is fun because you get to steal an identity and try to make it authentic.
Dan Chaon
I like to sleep about four or five really solid hours at night, and then sometimes take a nap in the afternoon or early evening after dinner. I love naps.
Dan Chaon
Maybe it's because I grew up during the MTV generation, but to me a perfect song is one I can imagine a music video to, a song that can take you into a dream.
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The happiest I have ever been is in the life that I led with my wife and kids.
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The earliest impetuses for writing, for me, were simply the strange things I happened to notice in my everyday life, stuff I read about in the grocery store tabloids my mom bought, situations that struck me as compelling, anecdotes I'd heard, images, words, metaphors.
Dan Chaon