“Since most of the action of the war actually happens off the page (offstage), I wanted to give the characters something they had to contend with on a daily basis, some sort of obstacle. Weather seemed to be the one great equalizer regardless of your station in life - when it snows, everyone is inconvenienced to a certain degree. Plus it's tactile, weather, it affects the skin.” GivingWarCharacterHappensActionWantedCertainDegreesPagesSkinsBasesObstaclesSnowWeatherStationsPlusEqualizerTactile Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
“An initial impulse of mine was to portray the way in which a city is impacted by war. But this is vague, no? After all, how do you actually have an entire city - or country, for that matter - be a character a reader can follow? One way is by making it smaller and personalizing it, by writing specifically about the citizens and the way they contend with the reality, even minutiae, especially minutiae, of their lives.” WayWritingWarCountryMatterCharacterRealityCitiesMinesReaderCitizensOne WayImpulseVagueInitialsMinutiae Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
“I liked the push and pull of that, between the outer political world and the inner personal lives of the characters. It's also real life... Many of us are keenly aware of world events, but break your nose and I bet that's the main thing you'd be focused on.” WorldRealCharacterPoliticalBreakEventsFocusedReal LifeNosesPersonal LifeWorld Events Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
“But it's hard for me to pinpoint where all my characters and dialogue come from - imagination or real life. My memoir, of course, was all about my past, and many of the short stories cleave very closely to my life, but the more stories I wrote in the collection, the more that seemed to be invented, but who knows... I think I'm writing about a young woman with acne who shoplifts, but I'm really writing about myself.” ThinkingKnowsWritingRealHardCharacterStoriesPastYoungCoursesImaginationReal LifeMemoirDialogueCollectionsShort StoryYoung WomenMy PastAcne Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
“The benefit of writing a collection - as opposed to a novel - is that I'm able to have some version of the war in each story without having to comment on its all-encompassing nature. Turn the page and here are new characters and new situations, but the war remains... Isn't that how life has been for us for over a decade?” WritingHas BeensWarCharacterStoriesAbleTurnsSituationNovelBenefitsPagesRemainsDecadesVersionsCollectionsCommentNew Situations Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
“This is one of the ways fiction is more liberating than nonfiction - I don't have to be so concerned with fact. I had the paradigm of certain people in my head who became my characters, but I never considered these people to be from a "certain sector of society," unless we agree that we're all from certain sectors of society.” PeopleWayCharacterFactsCertainFictionConcernedAgreeNonfictionLiberatingParadigm Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
“I don't work with an outline, except a vague one in my head, a general idea of character, place, arc... I'm like a composer with a symphony in their head: I can hear the music, I just have to figure out how to put it down on paper. But I don't always know where my stories are going when I begin.” KnowsI CanIdeasCharacterStoriesFiguresPaperComposerVagueSymphonyOutlinesArcs Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
“Love and happiness inextricably combined? I wanted love stories to coincide with war stories, I wanted hope for my characters, I wanted a sense of a future. So do they. So does the reader. But perhaps I shouldn't speak for everyone when I say that love and happiness are interdependent. In my own experience, happiness came with love. Specifically, my wife. That's when my own apathy and stasis ended for good.” DoeWarCharacterStoriesWantedSpeakMy OwnWifeReaderMy WifeLove StoryApathyHappiness And LoveWar StoriesStasisWanted Love Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
