Some Thoughts About Blood

Some Thoughts About Blood

I am sitting in my dining room, eating a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and apples. It is morning. I am perusing my latest issue of the New Yorker and come across a review (by Jerome Groopman) of Rose George’s book Nine Pints. The first...

Rooms That Write

I once had someone say to me, “If I had a room like that, I could write a novel too.” It wasn’t someone I knew, a friend of a friend, I’m proud to say; I like to think none of my friends would say something so foolish. “Really?” I wanted to say, “you think the room’s...

The Power of Fiction

I got a big compliment the other day. A friend, I’ll call her Mothra, had just handed back my latest manuscript—working title: Perfect Little Worlds—after marking it up with various punctuation and line edits. I like to think of her work as helping me sniff out what I...