I definitely don’t think of myself as someone identified by region. It’s too far-flung a region, for starters, and southern New Mexico is very isolated. I wouldn’t think of my identity as generational, either, but maybe as more stylistic, in the school of realism and domestic issues. Antonya Nelson Read Quote
I think what I like best is that when people give talks or workshops, it doesn’t really matter what level you are as a writer – whether you are a beginner, or you’ve been around the block a bit; there’s something that you can take away from every session. Antonya Nelson Read Quote
Finding pleasure in revision is the thing I would most strongly advise to people. It’s not something I did as a younger writer; I learned it over time. Antonya Nelson Read Quote
I guess the thing I would say most fervently is that your original impulse to write something is an impulse you should trust, and that if it doesn’t work on the first draft, which it hardly ever does, the commitment to revising ought to be something you embrace really early. And to revise and revise and revise. Antonya Nelson Read Quote
I like hearing other writers just about the way they approach writing. It gives me energy for my own work. It’s weird; I’m always taking notes about fiction when I’m listening to people talk about craft. Antonya Nelson Read Quote
I’m a little hesitant to make my characters sentimental or to risk having the work labeled sentimental. It’s something that I resist as a reader, and I don’t resist it in life. I’m not an unmoved person by any stretch, but I think I don’t want, I guess, to indulge those kinds of things sometimes in fiction. I can’t tell you why exactly. Antonya Nelson Read Quote
I often think of the novel as a form that celebrates social groups, and the short story being a form that is capable of celebrating an individual or a sort of insular little pair of people. Antonya Nelson Read Quote
I think maybe short stories operate in some of the same ways that poems do. They frame single or small moments and elevate those. They give you insight into more minor dramas maybe, dramas between smaller groups of people. Antonya Nelson Read Quote
I like the way that psychological extremity can illuminate more ‘normal’ characters by forcing a comparison. Antonya Nelson Read Quote