“Years ago I read an interview with Paula Fox in which she said that in writing, truth is just as important as story. Reading that interview was the first time I really understood that there's no point in trying to impress people with my cleverness when I can just try to write honestly about what matters most to me.” PeopleWritingTryingYearsFirstsSaidI CanImportantMatterStoriesReadingTruth IsUnderstoodFirst TimeYears AgoHonestlyInterviewsWhat MattersImpressFoxesNo PointClevernessNo Point In Trying Author:Molly Antopol
“With the Israel stories, it was for me the most surprising way the title would fit in. I kept thinking about, for a lot of my Israeli characters, what it was like to inherit such a complicated and symbiotic relationship to America and to feel how tangled that is, and it's nothing that they chose to do themselves.” ThinkingWayFeelsCharacterStoriesAmericaFitIsraelComplicatedTitlesSurprisingIsraeliTangled Author:Molly Antopol
“I knew that I was writing for an American audience and that if I sold foreign rights, they would retranslate the book to make it make sense to that language. But one thing that was really important to me was not to italicize any of the words in the languages that were in the stories, because I feel like those foreign words felt just as important and integral to the story as everything else, so I wanted it all to just exist as its own thing.” IfsFeelsWritingImportantBookStoriesWantedLanguageFeltAudienceRightsOne ThingMake Sense Author:Molly Antopol
“It's funny - for a long time, I didn't know I was writing a book. I was writing stories. For me, each story took so long and took so much out of me, that when I finished it, I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I've poured everything from myself into this, and then I'd get depressed for a week. And then once I was ready to write a new story, I would want to write about something that was completely different, so I would search for a totally different character with a different set of circumstances.” KnowsWantFeelsWritingLongBookDifferentCharacterStoriesWeekReadyCircumstancesLong TimeFinishedWriting A BookDifferent CharactersWriting StoriesOh My Gosh Author:Molly Antopol
“The Israel stories were really hard for me to write, because I think that my book is very much about politics, but it isn't political. It really was important for me to not have a political agenda at all, because I have a hard time stomaching any political fiction that feels message-y.” ThinkingFeelsWritingImportantBookHardStoriesPoliticalFictionMessagesIsraelHard TimesAgendasPolitical Agendas Author:Molly Antopol
“It was tricky [to write about Israelis], because everyone has an opinion about the Arab - Israeli conflict, and when I first started writing these stories, I was working for an Arab - Israeli human rights group. It was during the Second Intifada. It was this totally violent and intense time, and I think there's a part of me where I don't know how to write about that situation without getting my politics out of my messages, and that's something that was important for me not to do in this book.” ThinkingKnowsWritingFirstsHumansImportantBookStoriesSituationOpinionKnow HowRightsGroupsConflictMessagesHuman RightsViolentIntenseIsraeliTrickyArab Israeli Conflict Author:Molly Antopol
“So if there was a way that I knew something about my character's desires or the things that they were resisting because I was saving it for some grand epiphany moment for my readers, I just feel like that's when you can feel the machine at work in a story. That's when you can feel the writer pulling the strings of the puppet.” IfsWayFeelsMomentsCharacterStoriesDesireReaderMachinesSavingStringsPullingPuppetsResistingEpiphany Author:Molly Antopol
“So in the drafting process, whenever I would discover something about what my character wanted or didn't want, I immediately just wanted my character to admit to that so I could get to the next, more interesting level in the story.” WantCharacterStoriesWantedNextProcessInterestingLevelsDrafting Author:Molly Antopol
“I felt like if I could get the epiphany out of the way in my drafting process, through my eighth or tenth draft, then that can just be part of how I've assembled the character, and then we can move on and move forward with it. In general, I don't ever want to feel smarter than my characters, because I just feel like that's not a great way to write a story.” IfsWayWantFeelsWritingCharacterStoriesMovingFeltProcessMoving ForwardIf I CouldSmarterEpiphanyDrafting Author:Molly Antopol
