Quote

Writing about women's sexuality is very scary for me because I'm always afraid I'll get it wrong.

Dan Chaon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dan Chaon
Age: 60
Novelist
Writer
Sidney
Nebraska
Writing
Always
Sexuality
Scary
Afraid
Wrong
Women

More quotes by Dan Chaon

Image
I don't think anybody deals well with tragedy or grief, but maybe my characters are particularly bad at it. Which is why I love them.
Dan Chaon
Image
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
Image
The kind of person I find myself interested in is a cross between being very emotionally complex and very immature. That's what I felt I was like when I was younger.
Dan Chaon
Image
The thing that grounds you, and the thing that really gives you a sense of wholeness, is your family, friends and your community. Those are the things that can mirror back to you what you're experiencing, and can affirm to you that the stories you are telling are true.
Dan Chaon
Image
I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.
Dan Chaon
Image
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.
Dan Chaon
Image
That's how I work, whether with stories or novels - they start with an image that comes to me in a daydream, and a lot of times I'm walking around with these pictures in my head for awhile before I start writing.
Dan Chaon
Image
I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love.
Dan Chaon
Image
One of the things I rarely do is write about sex.
Dan Chaon
Image
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
Image
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.
Dan Chaon
Image
I'm certainly very influenced by what you would call 'contemporary headline horror,' stuff that is true crime or for one reason or another catches our attention in the media, those strange cases that we end up obsessing about. I'm always influenced by weird anecdotes and news.
Dan Chaon
Image
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
Image
A lot of time, with stories, I'll start out with a title and try to dream myself into the story that it evokes - a kind of subconscious exercise in which I'm trawling for some kind of entryway into fiction.
Dan Chaon
Image
A lot of times in my short fiction there isn't much dramatized scene - there are a lot of short, interconnected bits, snippets of conversation, continual action, and so on. I frequently rely pretty heavily on voice.
Dan Chaon
Image
Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work.
Dan Chaon
Image
I think at a certain point the book develops a certain weight, or pressure. You've been pushing the rock up the hill for a long time and then it starts to roll and things do start to come together in the last two thirds.
Dan Chaon
Image
So this was what it felt like to lose yourself. Again. To let go of your future and let it rise up and up until finally you couldn't see it anymore, and you knew that you had to start over.
Dan Chaon
Image
In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.
Dan Chaon
Image
I tend to like order in almost every other aspect of my life, but for me, the process of writing is really chaotic and decadent and indulgent.
Dan Chaon